Shabazz Jackson of Beacon is fighting on three fronts for a clean environment and was doing so before it became fashionable.
As founder of a business that grew into Greenway Environmental Services, he is involved in pollution prevention, organic and mineral recovery, and education.
A graduate of Beacon High School, Jackson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the State University of New York in Stony Brook and went on to study at the Waste Management Institute at Cornell University.
“I lived in England and Spain for a while and learned at that time that the United States had 5 percent of the world”™s population, but consumed 50 percent of the earth”™s resources,” he said. “After use, we burned them or buried them. We don”™t have the right to do that even if we have the power.”
The politics of landfills presented an early obstacle, Jackson recalled. “Science found landfills polluting. Burning waste is expensive and also pollutes.”
Taking action
Jackson founded his business in l976 and incorporated it 10 years ago, taking in a partner, Josephine Papagni of Newburgh, who had spent 23 years in the communications field and wanted to make a positive contribution. Knowing of the work done by Jackson, she invested her severance package and mortgaged her home to become a partner. Trained by the founder to operate heavy construction equipment, she finds herself much more than a money partner.
Greenway works as a consultant to the auto recycling industry, developing pollution prevention plans and designing systems to prevent spillage and to stop fumes from escaping. The two partners conduct training programs and do on-site inspection, identifying probable sources of pollution. They monitor storm water runoff in junk yards to make certain that no chemicals have leaked.
In its organic and mineral recovery facility, Greenway recovers materials excavated from construction jobs, including from the expansion at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie. “We train the excavators to sort out the material as it is being excavated,” Jackson explained. “We recover subsoil and blend it with organics, using a one-half-inch screen, to produce top soil adhering to standards set by the New York State Department of Transportation for soil used for plantings along its highways.”
Leaves and wood waste are also converted into usable products such as mulch and compost.
The two partners are doing a pilot educational Zero Waste project at Vassar College, where the goal is to eliminate waste through a recovery of organic, recycling and purchasing materials on the front-end that are capable of either recovery or recycling. One student built a cooker to convert used cooking oil from the college”™s cafeteria into nonfossil bio-fuel that can replace traditional diesel fuel. The student received college credits for her environmental studies senior project.
”˜Watching barriers disappear”™
Greenway”™s educational outreach is not limited to the Vassar College students. Greenway has a mentoring relationship with the Cornell Cooperative”™s “Green Teen” program and has provided assistance to New York State Agricultural Workers (NYSAW) with educational tours and workshops.
Shabazz envisions a future in which institutions routinely replace plastic cutlery with compostable substances such as soy, corn or other vegetable starches.
Greenway will institute a conservation program at Marist College in the fall that will begin with the collection of food prep waste from the college”™s cafeteria. “No single entity can affect a clean environment alone,” Jackson said. “Education enables all society to participate.”
Although most of his work is satisfying, the Beacon resident has nightmares about the cleanup he did along the Bronx River, where a New York City power plant had made gas from coal. He parked his excavator on a bulkhead that turned out to be rotted. The machine began sliding down toward the river. He was able to anchor the excavator”™s arm to secure the vehicle while he called for help and was rescued by a big wrecker.
“But the happiest aspect of the work is seeing things change as I thought they would and being able to stick at it, watching barriers disappear,” he said.
“One of my family members says that I didn”™t change with the times; that the times changed.”
Â
