Working Groups
CAAN has three working groups that function together to achieve our goals. Explore these groups and join one that interests you!
Pollution Watchdog Group
By raising public awareness and targeted activism, our Pollution Watchdog Group has a good shot at improving the health of our environment here in the greater Glens Falls region.
While we already have a great group of people, there is room for many more. Whether you like to do research, write letters to the editor, speak up at city council meetings, schmooze with influential people, share information on social media or support a great cause, we invite you to join with us in creating a strategic campaign for cleaner air. No experience or specialized background required.
Contact us at:
contact@cleanairactionnetwork.org or call
Tracy Frisch at 518-692-8242.
Zero Waste Committee
CAAN’s Zero Waste Initiative is working to bring Warren County into the 21st Century as a Zero Waste community. This is not only a good idea -- it is also possible and necessary and ultimately we will succeed.
Even if you have never heard of the term Zero Waste, you are undoubtedly familiar with some of its elements – Refuse, Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle, and Compost. The quantity of municipal solid waste from our homes, businesses, schools and institutions going to landfills or incinerators can be greatly reduced in these ways – through public policies that require and incentivize the desired behaviors, and local programs and social entrepreneurs that provide the necessary infrastructure and opportunities to make these behaviors easy and convenient. Zero Waste saves money, creates jobs, and is an essential part of the solution to the climate crisis (because excess packaging, single-use items, and other throw-away customs, including landfilling and incineration, squander finite resources and produce greenhouse gases).
If you think all that sounds too good to be true, consider this: Hundreds of cities, counties and other political jurisdictions in the United States, Europe and Asia have demonstrated that it is feasible and beneficial to make substantial progress toward Zero Waste. For example, having embraced the goal of Zero Waste, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle now divert at least 70 percent of their municipal solid waste for recycling and composting. In our region, the Town of Bethlehem, an Albany suburb the size of Queensbury, has surpassed its initial 50 percent diversion goal (so it’s halfway to Zero Waste) and now, with its expanded food-waste composting capacity, is well on its way to even greater waste reduction. (Food waste makes up more than one-fifth of the residential waste stream. Check your own trash, and consider backyard composting or subscribing to a curbside food waste collection service.)
Zero Waste involves the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials, without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health. Zero Waste moves communities and businesses toward a circular economy.
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please contact
Diane at dc.wildflowers@gmail.com or
call Tracy Frisch at 518-692-8242.
Environmental Health Group
The Environmental Health component of our work is an outgrowth of the critique by Paul Hancock, PhD, and David Carpenter, MD, of the NYS Department of Health’s study that erroneously attributed Warren County’s highest-in-the-state cancer rates to lifestyle factors. The Hancock-Carpenter study considered other possible causes of the elevated cancer rate, and pointed to the evidence of PCB-contaminated soil on sites in Glens Falls and the surrounding area as a likely factor. The Environmental Working Group will take the lead in determining the next steps to address this.
CAAN will also be exploring other diseases and health problems in the area might be associated with toxic exposures through the air, water, or land. And we will research and investigate various types of environmental pollution and chemical contamination that may present a risk to human health. This working group will consider the need for environmental testing and bio-monitoring for particular contaminants suspected of being present, such as PCBs from GE and legacy contaminants from Ciba Geigy and Hercules as well as heavy metals such as lead and mercury from the trash incinerator.
To offer information or ideas or contribute your time or particular expertise to the Environmental Health Working Group, please write to us at the cleanairactionnetwork.org or call Tracy Frisch at 518-692-8242.
