Environmental justice movement

The creation of industries focused on reusing previously manufactured products grew out of an increasing awareness of the effects of industrialization and urbanization on the planet s atmosphere, waters, and land. The launching of the global environmental justice movement is credited to Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring (1962) stimulated public awareness of the effects of unrestricted pesticide use in the United States. 

As the 1980s evolved, environmental justice groups developed in many different racial and ethnic communities African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Pacific groups, and the indigenous people of North America. By 1991, the EJ movement had a clear national identify and philosophy, expressed in the Principles of Environmental Justice adopted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, DC, which was attended by more than a thousand community activists. 

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