Tell Target the Poison Plastic PVC Is Out of Style

Evidence mounts against PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastic, which is pervasive in consumer products. The Center for Health, Environment and Justice is mounting a campaign to get Target to join Bath and Body Works, Honda, Ikea, Microsoft, Nike, Toyota, and Wal-Mart in committing to phase out PVC products.

How GE Is Plugging Into the Green Movement to Move Jobs and Advanced Technology to China

Save the environment--or save a U.S. job? That's the choice General Electric is forcing on U.S. consumers and its own workers. 

GE is promoting new, energy saving light bulbs known as compact fluorescents, or CFLs. These bulbs last longer and use less energy than the typical incandescent bulbs found in most U.S. homes--but can cost up to 10 times the price.

GE is asking consumers and its employees to sign a pledge to "go green" and start purchasing the CFL light bulbs, which are imported from China. The problem is that each pledge leads to the loss of jobs in U.S. lighting plants. GE is actually asking workers in its lighting plants to pledge to put themselves out of a job!

Please join with us, the workers at GE lighting, to ask GE to manufacture green in U.S. plants, so we all can benefit. We shouldn't have to choose between a clean environment or a pink slip for American workers.

Make CFL bulbs in  Northeast Ohio

From:

You probably know that General Electric has stopped making light bulbs in East Cleveland. And you may know that the company makes its CF bulbs (sold by Wal-Mart, Target, etc.) in Chinese factories. But did you know that the GE still makes incandescent bulbs in three Youngstown-area plants? The plants in Warren, Niles and Austintown employ more than 600 people — people whose unions are getting pretty upset that GE has joined the national push for conversion to CF and other new high-efficiency bulbs, but refuses to invest in converting their Youngstown-area plants to manufacture them.

Mittal Steel Cleveland Works Good Neighbor Campaign

The Mittal Steel Cleveland Works is the single largest polluter of the air and water in Cuyahoga County. To be a good neighbor, Mittal Steel can reduce the dangerous emissions coming from its stacks and pipes by investing in modern pollution prevention technology. ISG (the previous owner) was the recipient of tremendous goodwill and subsidies from Northeast Ohio taxpayers and Mittal inherited those benefits.

AMP-Ohio Conventional Coal: Risk without Reward

A consortium of Ohio communities [including the City of Cleveland], led by the AMP-Ohio, plans to build a conventional coal power plant in southeast Ohio. The proposed plant will utilize outdated scrubbing performance to reduce emissions. Years ago, AMP-Ohio’s plant and rationale for building it may have made sense, but the regulatory landscape has fundamentally shifted, and AMP-Ohio has not advanced their thinking.

Out best strategy to address increasing energy demands is to improve energy efficiency and develop renewable power sources. While we are still developing our renewable energy industry, it is imperative that we use the absolute cleanest technology for any new power generation.

AMP-Ohio’s choice of technology leaves municipalities exposed to unmanageable and expensive risk. AMP-Ohio’s proposal is centered on century old technology. Similar conventional coal plants have been turned down in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, partially because they are not a cost-effective choice once carbon becomes regulated. When it comes to carbon costs, AMP’s member communities will spend huge sums of money.

AMP-Ohio is hoping to use a future PowerSpan Carbon Capture technology, which is in the infant stages of development and is unproven to effectively capture carbon emissions on a power plant scale. To date, the technology that has been proven effective to control CO 2 at plants like AMP-Ohio’s is staggeringly expensive. Therefore, OEC opposes this AMP-Ohio power plant. Other options, like IGCC or Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle coal power, have proven less polluting and far less expensive in a carbon capture context.

Efficiency and renewables are the priority for the next generation of energy needs. There is no such thing as clean coal. However, if coal is to be utilized for energy production, it must be mined, processed, and utilized with as few environmental, health, and social impacts as possible. For the extraction of coal, this means banning mountaintop removal mining and the most harmful forms of strip mining. It means that mining interests must clean up their mess, restoring the land and waters they have impacted.

When using coal for energy, the best and cleanest technologies must be employed. Right now, IGCC with carbon capture is the better technology. This process can capture most of the harmful emissions from producing energy from coal, including dangerous carbon dioxide and mercury. Until new technological breakthroughs occur, this is a technology that offer strong environmental and efficiency improvements over traditional pulverized coal.

IGCC plants have been running in the U.S. for more than ten years. In Europe, IGCC power plants are used commercially with a variety of fuels, including those even more difficult to process than coal.

Below are links to documents from independent sources illustrating these important points, and to Governor Strickland’s Energy Plan, which would help Ohio transition away from dirty pulverized coal.

When it comes to the financial, public health, and environmental costs of carbon, AMP-Ohio needs to embrace new technology available today, not an old plant design, hoping for some miracle that will make it economically viable. AMP-Ohio can and should do better.

Efficiency is the best option for Ohio’s communities, including the consortium represented by AMP-OH. Renewables offer a second best option. If AMP-OH insists on processing coal, we must demand that the cleanest, most advanced technology is deployed; IGCC is that technology.

Ohio League of Conservation Voters

Ohio Public Interest Research Group

Ohio Sierra Club

[TOP]