Joan Batory, an environmental activist and retired coordinator of recycling and solid waste in Philadelphia and Chester County, died on July 27 aged 79, writes Gary Miles for The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Batory was also a former regional planning manager for the National Park Service and an original member of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission. 

In the late 1960s, she was a beloved history teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden. Environmental inequities she noticed in underserved South Jersey communities brought her interest in environmental justice and sustainability to the forefront. She went on to develop public policy that affected millions of people and made substantial changes in everyday life. 

Chester County officials hired Batory in 1989 to lead their budding recycling program. She organized recycling programs and updated waste management procedures for 50 municipalities in the county for nearly a decade, and she also established enforcement policies. 

Her innovative programs won several awards, bringing many recycling advocates to West Chester to study her success. 

In 1998, she was brought to Philadelphia by then-Mayor Ed Rendell to implement the same changes. 

She established the Green Condominium Initiative in Philadelphia in 2009 to promote environmental sustainability for large multifamily buildings. 

Read more about the life of environmental activist Joan Batory in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

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