Earthshot Prize Awards

To honor our community’s environmental heroes, FracTracker Alliance created the Community Sentinel Award for Environmental Stewardship. The annual award ceremony celebrates individuals whose noble actions exemplify the transformative power of committed and engaged people. In collaboration with our sponsors and partners, the award is presented to multiple recipients at a virtual reception before fellow activists, allies and conspirators, all of whom are working towards a healthier and more just future.

​This year the Community Sentinel Awards ceremony will be held on Thursday, December 8th. We also welcome our partners and community members to submit the names of activists who have passed away over the last year, so that we may honor their lives and their work during the Legacy of Heroes presentation during the awards ceremony.

​Here are this year’s winners – help us celebrate them on December 8th!

• ​Cesar Aguirre – Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN), California
• Dr. Joy Banner & Jo Banner – The Descendants Project, Louisiana
• ​Laurie Barr – Save our Streams PA, Pennsylvania
• ​Dr. Crystal Ann Cavalier-Keck – 7 Directions of Service, North Carolina
• ​Chanté Davis – Sunrise Movement, Texas
• ​Jill Antares Hunkler – Ohio Valley Allies, Ohio

Join Beyond Plastics and Just Zero for an important briefing on a new model bill designed to reduce packaging, sometimes called Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging, on Wednesday, December 7, at 4pm Eastern Time.

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging is heating up in state capitals across the US, both from environmental groups and plastic producers. The essential function of EPR is to shift the cost of packaging disposal from consumers to the companies that produce the products. It is a policy that signals major changes in the waste system and an economy-wide transition, as nearly every piece of packaging in stores would be covered under EPR.

However, this idea has been hijacked by plastic producers, big consumer brands, and companies that want to burn plastics rather than reduce it.

Ineffective EPR bills, mainly those pushed by industry, will delay action on plastic reduction for years. However, EPR has the potential to be an effective policy tool for preventing plastic pollution, improving recycling, decreasing toxic additives, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions – if the legislation includes specific requirements.

Beyond Plastics and Just Zero are supporting a model bill that requires:

Packaging to be reduced, refilled or reused by 50% over ten years; toxics in packaging to be reduced; a new revenue source to be established for local governments to invest in waste reduction and recycling programs; chemical recycling to be prohibited in all of its incarnations, materials that cannot be source reduced to be recycled at a 70% rate over ten years.

The bill is designed to move packaging away from single-use plastics, the most common source of pollution and a major contributor to climate change, toward reusable, refillable, and truly recyclable packaging, while funding recycling in municipalities.

Join Judith Enck, Kirstie Pecci, and Peter Blair for a special briefing on the model EPR bill on Wednesday, December 7, at 4pm Eastern Time. We will explain our model and the differences from other packaging proposals being peddled by the packaging industry.