A story by Connie O'Connor on Stephanie Carlson. This article is also featured in the November 6, 2026, issue of The Ripple.
Click here to subscribe to this monthly e-newsletter!
It was an ordinary football practice in Hebron, Ohio. Kids ran drills while parents watched. But behind them, thick black smoke rolled out of a nearby plastic chemical recycling plant. One parent took a photo. Other parents called the Ohio EPA and wrote down what they saw. A local mom filmed the smoke and sent the video to regulators. They were right to be concerned. Chemical recycling of plastic is nasty business and this Hebron-based business was in over its head. Within 18 months, the plant decided to suspend operations. This plant probably would not have chosen to shutter on its own – it was held accountable by the collective action of many concerned people.
Local members of Moms Clean Air Force were some of these people. As a sub-group of the Environmental Defense Fund (one of the country's largest environmental nonprofits, Moms Clean Air Force has been around for fifteen years and appeals to people who love their kids and worry about their health. One of the Vice Presidents for Environmental Defense Fund, Dominique Browning, founded Moms Clean Air Force because she wanted to move the climate conversation "from polar bears to people," by amplifying the message that kids deserve to play outside and breathe clean air. The science is clear: children breathe faster than adults and take in more air for their size, so pollution hits their developing bodies harder. What parent wouldn’t be concerned?
Moms Clean Air Force has about 1.6 million supporters nationally, 100,000 of them added in the past year, with about 94,000 in Ohio. Ohio has two organizers: Amanda Rowoldt and Rachel Sica Meyer.
Amanda Rowoldt lives in Dublin, outside Columbus, with her two boys, now 9 and 12. She was a stay-at-home mom for ten years before taking on this work almost two years ago. Her path here started with a diagnosis. In 2021, when her sons were 3 and 7, she learned she had aggressive breast cancer. After surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, she kept asking why. Her research led her to plastics and petrochemicals, and to the environmental factors that can raise cancer risk.
She explains: "I thought I was going to die, and when I didn’t, I just felt compelled to do something to make this right. I got a second chance.” Amanda explains that plastic contains more than 16,000 chemicals, and the process of chemical recycling adds more. It leaves behind contaminated resin, toxic ash and emissions that can carry heavy metals and fine particulate matter, which is especially harmful to children's developing brains and lungs. "They call it circularity, circular economy, advanced recycling," she says. "It all sounds nice. But it's really misleading."
The Hebron facility called itself an "advanced recycling" plant. It heated plastic waste, including medical waste, and mixed it with chemicals to break it down into an oily resin that could be sold to make new plastic. Similar plants operate in Akron and in Ironton. Although the Hebron plant held an air permit as a chemical recycling facility, Amanda says it should have been classified as a solid waste incinerator because there wasn’t much recycling going on. After multiple Ohio EPA violations, regulators moved to do just that, and when they did, the company suspended operations. "If they weren't even meeting the weak standards of a chemical recycling plant," Amanda explains, "they definitely weren't going to meet the stronger, tougher standards of a waste incinerator." Whether the closure is permanent is still unknown, but for now, residents can breathe easier.
Amanda describes the successful shutdown as "definitely a group effort." Neighbors and parents saw the smoke, called the Ohio EPA, took photos, and wrote down what they saw, time after time. Student journalists at Denison University's Reporting Project covered the story in depth with photos and parents' own words. Buckeye Environmental Network joined Moms Clean Air Force to meet with Hebron's mayor and local officials and held a joint press conference at the Ohio Statehouse. State inspectors on the ground visited the site, saw the smoke themselves, and understood how serious it was. The Ohio EPA then did the decisive work: it cited the plant for multiple violations and moved to regulate it under tougher incinerator rules.
