Residents of Youngstown, Ohio, have banded together to thwart a company’s plans to incinerate tires in their city, a designated environmental justice area one hour east of Akron, and plastics and computer waste in nearby Lowellville. On November 20, 2024, they won another big victory when the city council approved a second yearlong moratorium on the buildout of polluting plastic-burning facilities in their community.
As told to Rachel Sica Meyer by Lynn Anderson:
I was born in Youngstown in 1956. I left in 1978, when the steel mills collapsed. I came back in 1997 and bought a house on the west side above a gorgeous park here in Youngstown.
In November 2021, my friend called and asked if I’d seen the article in the Youngstown Vindicator. It said a company called SOBE Thermal Energy Systems, who had bought the old Youngstown Thermal business, was going to burn tires and plastics. I thought, Well, this is crazy.
Youngstown Thermal began operating in 1895. Until 2017, it burned coal to provide steam to heat nearby buildings. Residents were finally enjoying cleaner air. On November 22, 2021, I went to the Public Utilities Committee of Youngstown City Council to ask about the new owner. They said they didn’t know anything about SOBE. I told them that since the Youngstown City Health Department Air Pollution Division had been shut down, I was worried about how we would protect ourselves from this horrible pollution. The committee chair looked at me and said air pollution is regulated by the state. We can’t do anything about it. At that moment, I realized I had to get the word out to everybody in town. The entire year of 2022 was getting people informed and aware of this ludicrous plan.
Tell Congress: Burning Plastic Is Not a Solution to the Plastics Crisis
A core group of activists from Frackfree Mahoning Valley [which works to keep the Youngstown area free of fracking], including me, demanded that SOBE’s CEO come in front of the people of our city. On July 21, 2022, in front of a packed room, he announced his intentions to warehouse and chop up tires and plastics in Lowellville and then ship them to Youngstown to create synthetic gas and carbon black, a dye primarily used for tires. This would all be done through a highly polluting method of incineration called pyrolysis, which lately has deceptively been called “advanced recycling” or chemical recycling, even though nothing gets recycled. He said they would create more plastic, but only a very small amount of low-quality plastic has ever been produced this way. Then, he was also going to produce some electricity to sell to a contractor who would locate on site and stack up semi-truck trailers with computers in them to mine cryptocurrency.
From that nanosecond on, it was all out war. We weren’t going to let any of that happen here next to our college student housing, Black-owned businesses, and populated neighborhood with a hospital not far away.
Lynn Anderson.
We formed SOBE Concerned Citizens, and our first formal meeting was held at the Dorothy Day House on August 11, 2022. It consisted of neighborhood members that would be affected by the SOBE plant, environmental activists, and Frackfree Mahoning members. We planned a large October 12 public town hall at the Unitarian Church to inform the public. We invited the mayor, the council members, and the CEO of SOBE to speak, which he did. It turned out to be another marketing presentation, and attendees were outraged.
SOBE Concerned Citizens launched a campaign against SOBE. We did a billboard, direct mailers to Youngstown and Lowellville, door-to-door literature drops, yard signs, and more town hall meetings. We put together a website and contacted lawyers. The Kramer Environmental Law Clinic of Case Western Reserve University started providing us with pro bono legal help.
On February 20, 2023, SOBE changed their plan. Now, they would use tire chips in Youngstown and computer waste and chopped up plastics in nearby Lowellville to make synthetic gas products using pyrolysis. On July 6, the Ohio EPA issued a draft air pollution permit to SOBE. Despite public opposition and environmental justice concerns, SOBE was granted their final air pollution permit on February 14, 2024.
When we began our fight, I learned about the U.S. EPA Interim Policy on Environmental Justice Communities. It says you are an environmental justice community of concern if your community is sick with lots of heart disease and asthma, along with high rates of infant mortality and low birth weight among the Black population. EPA was making statements that polluting plants should not be located near our sick population, but it’s not law. It has no teeth. We need laws enacted. The air pollution from the SOBE facility would really impact children. They’re the most sensitive.
Youngstown should be focusing on a sustainable future for our beautiful city. We don’t need jobs that kill our neighbors. We need a more realistic game plan in the face of the climate crisis. Instead, we’re fighting the plastics and petrochemical industry along with the oil and gas industry that supplies it with chemicals like ethane from fracked gas to be used for making plastics.
I’ve been working on fracking issues since 2011. Our region’s fracked gas product continues to be targeted for the making of plastics. As long as single-use plastic continues to be overproduced, our Mahoning Valley will be fracked for gas to produce it, and we’ll be threatened by petrochemical pollution, including the production of synthetic gas from plastics and tires.
On December 20, 2023, the community had cause for celebration. Once people learned that SOBE would not be using what the company marketed as “new green technology” but rather an old form of incineration, it was a no-brainer. The Youngstown City Council passed a yearlong moratorium on pyrolysis and gasification in the city of Youngstown.
As the end of the moratorium approached, we worked with the Kramer Environmental Law Clinic and Youngstown City Councilwoman Anita Davis to update the ordinance. On November 20, 2024, Youngstown City Council unanimously approved another moratorium ordinance to keep pyrolysis out of Youngstown for another year.
With the renewal of the moratorium, Youngstown residents now have fresh hope that SOBE will abandon its plans to incinerate tires in our city. SOBE was legacied in to provide steam heating and cooling for the old buildings downtown, but industry, including SOBE, should not be expanding in this populated neighborhood. We are going to hammer this home. There’s no way you should do pyrolysis here.
Learn more about Moms’ work on “advanced recycling.”
Tell Congress: Burning Plastic Is Not a Solution to the Plastics Crisis