Environmental Justice Mapping Tools: Applications in the Waste Industry and EJ Advocates’ Concerns

  • EPA’s EJSCREEN mapping tool used by largest landfill operators in preparing sustainability and environmental justice reports.
  • Environmental justice advocates indicate application of EJSCREEN by landfill operators may skew magnitude of air pollution issues near facilities.

Posted By: Waste Dive | January 5, 2023

The beginnings of the environmental justice movement can be traced back decades to concerns around waste sites, but transparent data about the issue has only become more common among major companies in recent years.

WM, Republic Services, and Waste Connections — the largest U.S. landfill operators — released the latest versions of their own sustainability and environmental justice documentation this year, varying in degrees of data transparency, analysis, and commitments. 

All three reports utilized the U.S. EPA’s EJScreen, an open-source environmental justice mapping and screening tool. The 12 environmental indicators, seven socioeconomic indicators, and 17 environmental justice indexes all incorporate publicly available data which the EPA then displays at the desired geographic scale. The resulting report presents these indicators and indexes at the selected geography, including specific points; in the case of these environmental justice reports, the company-specific sites.

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