Environmental Injustice

(Honolulu, Hawaii) It's hard to keep up on the new political concepts created by the eco-crowd in society since it happens so regularly. Environmental injustice is newly anointed and, according to this story, is the condition where a landfill is closer to one person's home than it is to another home. Actually, it seems to be a simple renaming of the NIMBY (not in my back yard) principle.

Nevertheless, the residents of the Waianae coast of Oahu are claiming "environmental injustice" because their neighborhood is the home of the island's only landfill and they've vowed that they will physically block trash trucks from entering their streets to prevent the city from opening a new landfill.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I can't imagine the authorities allowing trash to accumulate anywhere on the island for very long. Given the tropical climate, any pile of garbage can become a public health hazard in a very short time.