Is it a good idea to operate a trash-burner next to a community with the highest asthma rate in the state? Why is the only trash burner in the metro built beside an overburdened community where much of the Twin Cities' Black population has been segregated over decades through redlining, racial housing covenants, and urban "mis"-planning?

We see across the country how Black, indigenous, and people of color die at much higher rates than other groups from COVID-19. This has a lot to do with the higher pollution they experience because of environmental racism. The "Hennepin Energy Recovery Center" (HERC) is one of the biggest producers of toxic emissions in the county, and ranks as one of the top emitters for almost all criteria pollutants identified by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (#1 nitrogen oxides, #2 sulfur dioxide,  #3 lead, #2 PM2.5, #4 PM10,  #6 carbon monoxide). And there are hundreds of other pollutants that are not being measured. In 2002, the HERC trash burner was responsible for 51.89% of all dioxins emitted in the *entire state* of Minnesota. Dioxins are extremely toxic chemicals that are a byproduct of burning plastic. They cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system, and can interfere with hormones.  And in the midst of a plastic crisis in which the petro-chemical industry produces more and more plastic (currently only 11.1% of all plastic is recycled in Minneapolis), we must shut the HERC down!

But we are not just working to shut down the HERC. We want to minimize landfilling too, and so we are moving Hennepin County to zero waste. We want to address the plastic crisis, and so we are pushing the county to join us in winning policies that address the plastic crisis far upstream. And we want to prevent community from being displaced as they clean up their land and property values increase.

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