Owner of Chester trash incinerator spent $45K on lobbying in Philadelphia as City Council considers waste incineration ban

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The owner of Chester’s trash incinerator ramped up its spending on lobbying Philadelphia politicians last year as City Council weighed a bill that could jeopardize the company’s future city contracts.

City records show Reworld, formerly known as Covanta, spent $45,000 on lobbying City Council members and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration in the final quarter of 2025. The company’s political action committee also donated $3,700 to Parker’s campaign in December. She will not face reelection until 2027.

“It really looks like it puts communities or everyday folks at a disadvantage,” said Zulene Mayfield, chairperson of the advocacy group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living.

Mayfield, who used to live across the street from the facility and now lives in Delaware, wants Philadelphia to stop sending its trash to Chester. She sees it as a case of environmental racism and thinks Reworld’s pollution worsens asthma and other health conditions that plague Chester residents.

“Basically, big money buys politicians,” she said. “They buy what they want.”

Roughly 40% of Philadelphia’s trash is incinerated, most of it at Reworld’s Delaware County facility. Environmental justice advocates say the city should not be sending its waste to be burned in Chester, a majority-Black city where Reworld’s incinerator contributes to unhealthy air pollution. 

The legislation City Council is considering would bar the city from signing waste disposal contracts with incineration companies like Reworld. Reworld’s current seven-year contract, worth tens of millions of dollars, expires this summer.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier introduced the Stop Trashing Our Air Act in September. The bill was voted out of committee in November, following a hearing in which members of Parker’s administration argued that more data is needed to compare the environmental impacts of landfilling and incineration, and that constraining the city’s waste disposal options would likely lead to higher costs for taxpayers, increase pollution from trucks transporting waste and fill up nearby landfills faster.

Council was set to vote on the act in January. During that meeting, Reworld employees and union officials testified that up to 120 jobs were at stake and said Reworld continuously monitors air emissions and operates below federal pollution limits.

But the bill never got to a vote. Gauthier put the legislation on hold at the last minute, saying other City Council members had asked for “more time” to consider the bill. A spokesperson for Gauthier declined to comment for this story.

Philip Hensley-Robin, director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, an organization that pushes for limits on money in politics, said so far, Reworld’s lobbying seems to be paying off.

“The bill was pulled from consideration, right?” he said. “And the Council hasn’t voted on it.”

Hensley-Robin sees Reworld’s activity as tipping the scale against residents who live near the facility and say their health is impacted by Philadelphia’s trash disposal.

“Folks in the city of Chester, they can’t spend $45,000 on lobbyists,” he said. “They can’t make thousands of dollars of contributions to candidates for political office, and our concern is that their voices aren’t adequately being heard in this discussion.”

A Reworld spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Reworld among largest spenders on lobbying in Philadelphia late last year

Reworld spent $45,000 on lobbying in the city during the final quarter of 2025, engaging in discussions about the bill with Gauthier and the city’s Department of Sanitation, according to city lobbying records. Reworld’s lobbyists also reported speaking with City Council members Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Jeffery Young, Curtis Jones Jr., Cindy Bass, Anthony Phillips, Rue Landau and Council President Kenyatta Johnson, or their staff, during that quarter.

“Polluters [don’t] just pollute our air, but pollute our politics,” said Mike Ewall, director of the Energy Justice Network, which advocates for a ban on incineration of Philadelphia’s waste.

It’s common for members of Council to be lobbied from multiple positions on a number of different bills. Grassroots lobbying conducted by volunteers does not require disclosure, since Philadelphia’s lobbying law only requires lobbying expenses over $2,500 in a quarter to be reported. Supporters of the anti-incineration bill do not appear to have reported any spending, according to the city’s lobbying information system.

Ewall, Mayfield and Chester Mayor Stefan Roots have advocated in favor of the legislation, including during a tour of Chester hosted by Gauthier for City Council members and their staff in November. Genevieve Greene, a spokesperson for Gilmore Richardson, said the councilmember did not take any meetings with Reworld lobbyists, but her legislative staff had meetings with parties on both sides of the anti-incinerator bill.

Vincent Thompson, a spokesperson for Johnson, said the city council president has spoken with Reworld lobbyists in the hallway outside of City Council chambers before Council meetings, as he has also done with residents of Chester, but has not had an official, sit-down meeting with lobbyists for Reworld.

“The Council president has also heard from the administration about their concerns about the bill and he has also heard from the sponsors of the bill about why they would like the bill passed, the same way that every other member of Council has heard,” Thompson said. “He’s taken all of that into consideration.”

Thompson did not specify Johnson’s position on the bill, but said the bill currently has neither support from nine members of City Council — which it would need to pass — nor from the Parker administration.

In a written statement, Carlton Williams, director of Philadelphia’s Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, said the city was unaware of the costs of Reworld’s lobbying efforts. He said the city has met with multiple entities about the proposed incineration ban, including Ewall’s Energy Justice Network and Reworld. He said the city has also talked with Gauthier about the impact that her bill could have on a request for proposals for the next waste disposal contracts and, as a result, added an environmental impact evaluation to its selection process for those contracts, which is currently underway.

“Per these discussions we continue to believe that the evaluation of these waste processes during the [request for proposals] is the best way to achieve a contract that is both fiscally and environmentally responsible to manage Philadelphia’s waste,” Williams said.

Reworld was among the biggest spenders on lobbying in the city during the last quarter of 2025. The $45,000 it spent on lobbying sits behind the more than $70,000 that the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia spent, but is comparable to groups like the American Beverage Association, which spent about $41,000.

“This is a sign of a really major push by an interest group to get their position in front of legislators,” Hensley-Robin said.

Reworld’s lobbying expenses for all of 2025 in Philadelphia totaled around $113,000, including for discussions about the bill and more general discussions with City Council members or their staff about the company or the city’s trash and sustainability initiatives. Reworld spent more on lobbying in the city during the final quarter of 2025 than it had spent during any other quarter since at least mid-2023, the earliest that lobbying expense records for the company appear in the city’s database. The company spent between $1,000 and $30,000 on lobbying in Philadelphia during most quarters since mid-2023.

Reworld frames its incinerators as a sustainable alternative to landfills, which release planet-warming methane. The company has said burning trash produces electricity and recovers metals for recycling.

However, Sintana Vergara, an environmental engineer who studies waste management at Swarthmore College, said on WHYY’s “Studio 2” that waste incineration tends to be more dangerous for human health than landfilling, in part because incinerators tend to release heavy metals and cancer-causing pollutants.

Reworld’s $3,700 donation to Parker’s committee

In December, Reworld’s political action committee made a $3,700 donation to Parker’s political committee, People for Parker, according to city campaign finance records.

Reworld’s December donation was a drop in the bucket of Parker’s campaign fundraising last year, amounting to a fraction of a percent of the nearly $1.7 million she raised in 2025. 

Aren Platt, executive director of People for Parker, pointed to the Mayor’s record.

“Cherelle Parker has served in elected office for 21 years,” Platt wrote in an emailed statement. “Since being sworn in as Mayor, she has raised more than $3.1 million from nearly 2,000 donors. Her record is crystal clear: not a single contribution has ever influenced a policy decision. Anyone who believes otherwise is sorely mistaken.”

Prior campaign donations from PACs associated with the company include $2,500 to Parker’s campaign in 2023 and another $2,500 to Parker’s transition and inaugural committee in 2024.

Political consultant Neil Oxman said Reworld’s $3,700 contribution is a “fairly small donation in today’s terms” and is unlikely to sway Parker’s thinking on the issue. He said these types of donations from corporate PACs are very common.

“It happens every day, in every campaign,” Oxman said. “People are buying access,”

“They want to be able to have somebody return their calls,” he added. “It’s that simple.”