BURNT has won a number of environmental victories since its founding in 1988, including: 

• Closure of the Nashville incinerator (a.k.a. the Thermal Transfer Plant, or just Thermal)

• Beat back a $200 Million expansion of Thermal

• Defeated a proposed Madison incinerator

• Got the Metro School System and the Juvenile Justice Hall to adopt less toxic pest control called "Integrated Pest Management" (IPM)

• A successful wet/dry demonstration project at Granbery Elementary School that continues to this day (including the acquisition of a state-of-the-art in-vessel composter)

• The Metro Health Board to require a clean up of the rendering plant

• Closed the Laidlaw-Osco hazardous waste plant (a notorious polluter in Cockrill Bend)

• Exposed the Health Department's haphazard pesticide spraying practices in 2003 & 2004. This resulted in an end to the four quadrant system that had Metro spraying pesticides four nights a week.

• Stood up for citizens who had been sprayed by the spray trucks while in plain view of the drivers and fought for two years for better notification. This resulted in the Health Department implementing the Reverse 911 notification for mosquito spraying and convoys which warn people in Nashville neighborhoods that the trucks are coming.

We hope to work together with you to further promote people's health and our community's environment in the areas pesticide reduction, solid waste recycling/composting, indoor air quality, clean water and clean air.  

Other Issues:

Integrated Pest Management [1992 to present -- 'No Spray Nashville Coalition']

Wet-Dry Recycling and Composting [1990 to present]

Rendering Plant [1991-1994]

Laidlaw-OSCO [1991-1996]

State of Tennessee ranks in the bottom five of all states in many environmental, education, income distribution, and other social indexes. The competition? Other southern states. Makes for lax regulations and lax regulators.

From landfills to pesticides, every issue boils down to water. Our clean water is contaminated by solid waste, prescription medicines eliminated in human waste, and pesticides. These poisons barely existed before 1940.

One clear result of BURNT actions is significant improvement of key commercial real estate. Would the Titans practice in Metro Center if the Rendering Plant causes terrible odors 4-5 times per week? Would the new Symphony Hall locate 2 blocks from the Thermal Site if the incinerator was burning garbage? Laidlaw-OSCO was very bad for Cockrill Bend.

BURNT began in 1988 with the proposed $200 million expansion of the downtown garbage burning incinerator.  The city also planned a $100 million solid waste processor connected to the expanded incinerator.

BURNT originally opposed only the expansion of the incinerator on environmental grounds–recycling alternatives and clean air.  However, we quickly found that decision makers were more concerned with land use.  The incinerator was on riverfront property and more valuable property would be needed with an expansion and the $100 million solid waste processor.

We also learned quickly to not be a single-issue group.   By 1991, when we won on the expansion of the incinerator, we were already active in clean air issues and pesticide use in the Metro Schools.   The worst thing to be is a single-issue group because if you win you have nothing to do.

However, even with the incinerator not expanded, and later closed, we are working on the same issue.  Metropolitan Government has substituted land filling for incineration.  A low yield, expensive curbside program [cost $1 million annually to divert 13,000 tons of recyclables which is 2% of the waste stream] is a creates good publicity but low performance.

The EPA demonstrates that waste stream can be recycled and reused. [link to EPA] 25% of the waste stream is compostable food and yard waste.  Paper is 38%.  Metals (8%) and plastics (10%) can be reused and recycled.

During year 2006, BURNT worked with the Tennessee State Legislature to write and pass a solid waste study by Middle Tennessee State University and Tennessee State University on how to reduce landfilling by using the raw materials in business and to compost. [link to bill]

PESTICIDES

BURNT has a long history of interest in pesticides.  We worked with the Metro Schools and other Metro Agencies to institute least toxic means of controlling pests.  Pesticides are powerful chemicals that accumulate in humans and the environment.

Following our work with the schools, rooms were no longer sprayed during school hours, teachers and students controlled waste and litter, and traps were used to evaluate the extent of the problem. [link to pesticide information–or to NO-Spray]

BURNT works through No-Spray Nashville to reduce spraying of pesticides to control mosquitoes.  Over a three-year period we have closely examined Health Department procedures for spraying.  We have appealed decisions to Court.  We have reduced the gallons of pesticides sprayed. [link No-Spray]