Local activists tackle waste with ‘Philly Talks Trash’ newsletter
How neighbors in Northwest Philly are communicating waste reduction.
This story was originally published in the Chestnut Hill Local, a partner newsroom in the Philly Journalism Collaborative.
A team of Pennsylvania residents who worked together as part of Weavers Way Co-op’s Plastics Reduction Task Force advised the business on how to shift away from single-use plastic. Three years ago, the group started sharing their knowledge about sustainability with a wider audience.
The activists – Hilary Baum, of Chestnut Hill; Hilary Zankel, of West Mt. Airy; Karen Melton, of East Falls; and Alisa Shargorodsky, of Bucks County – alongside Elaine Nguyen, of Mt. Airy, formed Philly Talks Trash, a quarterly newsletter highlighting environmental stories in Philadelphia and educating readers on plastic waste.
With eight editions and nearly 600 subscribers, the Philly Talks Trash Quarterly newsletter aims to galvanize readers into helping Philadelphia — and the rest of the world — become zero-waste, and transition toward a more circular economy.
Zankel said many people are interested in reducing their carbon footprint and plastic waste, but don’t know how. Philly Talks Trash provides a wide range of solutions.
“There are so many resources out there, but people have to do a little work to get them all in one place. And I feel like we’ve put a lot of them in one place, and we keep adding to it,” she said.
The quarterly newsletter and the Philly Talks Trash resource page refers readers to organizations, legislation, programs, businesses and products focused on reducing plastic use. There’s an extensive list of articles on initiatives readers can undertake to lower single-use packaging, food waste and their overall use of plastic.
The newsletter also features guest columns and an event section that lists upcoming local and international happenings. The politics section summarizes current environmental legislation.
The newsletter is a collaboration between the Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks’ Environment Action Committee and the Plastics Reduction Task Force of Weavers Way Co-op.
At Weavers Way, the Philly Talks Trash team members began meeting on a regular basis. Nguyen was introduced to the group in 2021 through Clean Water Action.
The group members told the Local they became interested in climate activism in their own ways, whether through their families or careers. Nguyen, who oversees subscriber engagement and newsletter design, said seeing the lack of green spaces in Kensington compared to the rest of the city sparked her interest in environmental justice.
“Growing up there, it’s just so glaringly obvious that not everyone is getting the right resources,” she said.
Baum said the group launched a speaker series in 2022 inviting experts to discuss waste reduction, but they decided a newsletter would allow them to engage more readers and be a better source of information.
“People can save it. And while there are ongoing additions to our amazing resource page, a lot of the content would still really be valuable over time, in a way that we couldn’t achieve with our speaker series,” Baum said.
Besides the local element, their newsletter stands out from other Philadelphia climate publications because they focus solely on single-use plastics.
They help explain current plastics legislation and how it will affect Philadelphia residents, as well as how people can become involved in these efforts, Melton said.
Mt. Airy’s Maurice M. Sampson II, the Eastern Pennsylvania director of Clean Water Action and Philadelphia’s first recycling coordinator in the 1980s, said there’s an interest in these topics in Philadelphia and they warrant more media coverage.
In a 2023 research study, Philadelphia residents said sanitation and trash removal were not covered enough by the local media. The city also struggles with illegal dumping and a low recycling rate.
Sampson commended Philly Talks Trash for discussing these issues in a public way and for providing hope to residents.
“I just think it needs a wider distribution, so that people who are civic leaders around the city can tune in to that,” he said. “We cannot resolve a lot of issues out there that are hard to make happen, like world peace or curing crime. There is no reason and no excuse for there to be problems with trash collection.”
The group hopes to expand its audience. Shargorodsky, founder of the Philadelphia sustainability nonprofit ECHO Systems — which offers educational resources and technical assistance to area communities — said the team wants to continue focusing on local environmental solutions and organizations in the newsletter.
“Society is a bit underimagined, and I think it can easily get us into a dark corner of thinking, ‘Oh, this is over.’ I think that what we need is to get people excited about the possibility, and to see other communities around our city activated around making solutions,” Shargorodsky said.
“That’s how social change happens,” she said, “by getting more people excited about what’s on the ground happening.”
Abby Weiss is an environmental reporter for the Local and a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at Abby@chestnuthilllocal.com.
Photo: Philly Talks Trash members Karen Melton, Elaine Nguyen, Hilary Baum, and Hilary Zankel.
Photo courtesy of Philly Talks Trash
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