Waste

Clean Water is taking-on single use products. From shopping bags, to food and beverage packaging, to plastic water bottles, our goal is to minimize the use of single use products. We engage businesses, local governments, and individual consumers in rethinking the disposable lifestyle.

Maryland

Sewage Backups in Baltimore

Heavy rainfall stresses all of our infrastructure: flooded transportation systems, leaking houses developing mold, inundated drinking water sources full of polluted runoff, and sewage systems letting rainwater leak in and

Recent Actions

Pennsylvania

Let's Eliminate Single-Use Bags in Philly!

Did you know the Philadelphia Water Department found that plastic bags comprise 17% of the total debris recovered by their skimming operations?

Act now!

New Jersey

Urge your town to pass a local plastics ordinance

Please contact your local officials to let them know you would like to see a single-use plastics ordinance in your hometown.

Go Reusable! Urge your town to pass a local plastics ordinance

Maryland

It's about time to #ReThinkDisposable bags in Baltimore!

Plastic bags litter our streets and streams, and their creation and disposal contributes to air and water pollution and climate change. Email the Mayor and City Council: it's about time to #ReThink Disposable plastic bags.

It's time to #breakfreefromplastic bags in Baltimore!

California, National

Take the Pledge to Reduce Single-Use today!

Pledge to reduce your reliance on single-use disposable products and packaging.

Take the Pledge!

English

Waste Blog Posts

25th Annual Fall Celebration Awardee Feature: Saugus Leaders, the Alliance for Health and the Environment

October 17, 2019

Behold the Saugus Sheroes of the Alliance for Health and the Environment: Ann Devlin, Debra Panetta, Jackie Mercurio!

A Confusing Week for Baltimore's Plastic Bag Ban

October 15, 2019

On Monday October 7 at 1:00 pm, I attended the Baltimore City Council Judiciary Committee's work session on the Plastic Bag Reduction Bill (#19-0401). It had to do with redefinition of a banned "plastic checkout bag" from a maximum thickness of 4 mils (thousandths of an inch) to a mazimum thickness of 2.25 mils.

MDE listens to stories about "A Geyser of Human Waste"

October 3, 2019

On September 30, 2019, the Maryland Department of Environment held a meeting on the growing concerns surrounding the effectiveness of the “Baltimore City Building Backup Expedited Reimbursement Pilot Program”. Albeit the name of the program is long, the issues that this program remedies are concise. In general, the program is meant to compensate for the cost of the flooding of sewage within the basements of Baltimore City residents.