On January 30th, the Land Use & Transportation Committee of the Baltimore City Council voted 7-0 on the Clean Air Act Bill that would close the Wheelerbrator garbage incinerator in downtown Baltimore, and have wide implications for solid waste management policies and programs in the city.… Read More
In 2017, ILSR launched the Baltimore Compost Collective, a food scrap collection and composting service that is employing local youth in Curtis Bay. Read more about the project here. This year we helped organize a community bin-build of a second composting system in order to expand the site’s capacity to compost food scraps. Check out our 1.5 minute time-lapse video of the bin-build!… Read More
Baltimore City’s Office of Sustainability recently released its Food Waste Recovery Strategy, written in partnership with ILSR.… Read More
Earlier this summer, ILSR Energy Democracy Research Associate Marie Donahue participated in an online video series entitled Solutionary Perspectives, produced by the Backbone Campaign’s Solutionary Rails project. The recent episode “Clean Energy, Community Economy, and Energy Democracy” released last week focuses on the topic of community solar, highlighting on-the-ground examples from Maryland and key resources from ILSR.… Read More
The Compost Collective is an entrepreneurship program where youth are trained in workforce skills, food access programming and community-scale composting. They are receiving guided, hands-on experience managing a small-scale composting operation and its expansion, and using the compost they create to grow fresh produce for the community at Filbert Street Garden.… Read More
Energy Justice Network (EJN) continues its grass roots campaign to stimulate recycling in Baltimore, a city that is suffering from a low household recycling rate of less than 20%.… Read More
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is assisting its working partners in an important campaign to stop Baltimore from sending its garbage to a privately-owned garbage incinerator, Wheelabrator Baltimore. ILSR joins United Workers, Energy Justice Network, and the Baltimore City Council in a strategy that includes passing more stringent air pollution regulations needed on the aging incinerator – more stringent than what is allowed by the state. Maryland is one of the few states in the US that allows local jurisdictions this right.… Read More
A pilot project in inner city Baltimore demonstrated that, “above all else low-income residents will recycle when provided the means, education and incentive to do so.” The project was coordinated by Dante Swinton, Energy Justice Network (EJN) in cooperation with the Westport Neighborhood Association.… Read More
Second Chance, the pioneering building deconstruction social enterprise and ILSR have been working partners since 2003, when the organization began operations. 2017 Impact Report from Second Chance, Baltimore Second Chance has grown to over 250 workers; most of these workers … Read More
