On Friday, PIRG Food & Agriculture advocate Danielle Melgar stepped in as a guest lecturer for an environmental communications class at Eckerd College in Florida. She shared with the class how her team won its Make Polluters Pay campaign, and how important strong communications were in the campaign’s success. Read more about the issue here, and follow along with the campaign’s incremental progress on the way to victory:

• Make Polluters Pay: How public education and advocacy revived the polluter pays principle
• Infrastructure bill begins the process of reinstating the Superfund tax “polluter pays” principle
• Reinstated ‘polluter pays’ tax goes into effect, protecting Americans from toxic waste
• Congress passes climate deal, reinstating ‘polluter pays’ tax on oil industry

While she now runs PIRG’s Food & Agriculture program, Danielle started this campaign with the Zero Out Toxics program. She and her team worked to build the public support necessary to pass good policy to ensure polluters pay to clean up toxic waste sites across the country.