=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #111
—January 10, 1989—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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WHAT CAN WE DO TO ENCOURAGE POLLUTION
PREVENTION INSTEAD OF WASTE TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES?
Everybody talks about pollution prevention, but almost no one
does anything about it. Of course there are individuals who take
recycling seriously and who adopt lifestyles that will minimize
their personal contribution to the destruction of the planet.
There are even corporations (3M comes to mind) who have made
substantial commitments to pollution prevention. But where it
counts–in the vast majority of corporate board rooms across
America-pollution prevention is something everyone applauds and
almost no one adopts.
One reason is that for 20 years, government, industry and the
environmental movement itself have focused their attention and
their money on waste management (managing the stuff after it has
been created) rather than pollution prevention (not making the
stuff to begin with). Industries typically build expensive
treatment plants to remove toxic chemicals from process
wastewater, rather than developing processes that either don’t
create toxic residues or that recycle them for in-plant use.
Similarly, incineration is proposed as a solution to landfill
shortages rather than municipal regulations to reduce disposable
packaging or boost the use of refillable beverage containers.
Pollution prevention is already–on paper–a national goal. The
1984 amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
for example, state that it is the “national policy of the United
States that, wherever feasible, the generation of hazardous waste
is to be reduced or eliminated as expeditiously as possible.”
Moreover, there is a growing body of literature showing that
pollution prevention is better for the environment than is
pollution treatment. For example, much of the pollution treatment
technology developed over the last 20 years merely moves
pollutants from one place to another. A great deal of wastewater
treatment consists of “air stripping,” for example, which really
just means turning liquid toxics into air toxics. Incinerators
take solid waste and turn it into air pollution, and, through ash
landfilling, into water pollution. Waste treatment technology, to
a large extent, shifts pollutants around in a sophisticated shell
game. Pollution prevention, on the other hand, avoids the whole
problem.
There is also a growing body of literature showing that pollution
prevention is a practical, near-term approach to environmental
protection, one that is particularly well-suited to solid waste
management. There are no serious technological obstacles to
extensive pollution prevention by both industry and consumers.
Furthermore, it generally costs less both socially and
economically to reduce or eliminate waste at all stages of a
product’s life cycle than it does to treat waste after it has
been created.
There are five main reasons why pollution prevention is not
practiced. First, the initial costs to industry may be quite
high, requiring considerable planning and capital investment to
minimize raw material and energy usage while creating a minimum
of pollutants. Second, since most government regulations focus on
end-of-pipe waste treatment, industry has sunk its money into
waste management, not pollution prevention. (The Clean Water Act,
for example, requires industry to adopt the “best practicable”
waste treatment technology.) Third is inertia. A very large
industry (including the traditional environmental movement), and
a large government bureaucracy, has grown up around pollution
treatment and management. This has created large numbers of
groups and individuals with a hefty financial stake in
maintaining the status quo.
A fifth reason is a definite lack of well-written material
telling policymakers what they could do to provide carrots and
sticks to move the nation away from pollution treatment and
toward pollution prevention.
Now there is a clear, concise guide to pollution prevention for
policymakers. It was written for state legislators in Illinois,
to help guide their thinking as they struggle to develop public
policies to promote pollution prevention. It is called SOLID
WASTE MANAGEMENT ALTERNATIVES: REVIEW OF POLICY OPTIONS TO
ENCOURAGE WASTE REDUCTION. We’ll refer to it as ALTERNATIVES.
ALTERNATIVES makes a crucial distinction between
industrial-commercial waste and post-consumer waste.
Industrial-commercial waste is unwanted stuff that results from
the manufacture and commercial handling of things. Post-consumer
waste is stuff that results from our daily lives–things we
discard after we have used them (garbage, trash, municipal solid
waste). These two types of waste, together, make up the nation’s
waste problem. They share some common characteristics (generally
speaking, they’re all dangerous, for example), but there are
critical differences between them. From the viewpoint of public
policy, they must be viewed and treated separately. Alternatives
makes the necessary distinctions, and discusses the policy
options available to legislators who want to prevent pollution by
avoiding the production of these wastes. Everyone interested in
turning off the toxic spigot will find this 70-page report highly
useful and thought-provoking.
(More on this report next week.)
Get: Elliott Zimmerman, SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT ALTERNATIVES:
REVIEW OF POLICY OPTIONS TO ENCOURAGE WASTE REDUCTION.
Springfield, IL: Illinois Department of Energy and Natural
Resources [325 West Adams, Room 300; zip: 62704-1892], Feb.,
1988. Available from: National Technical Information Service,
Springfield, VA 22161; order PB 88-188-560; $15.95. Phone (703)
487-4650.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: pollution prevention; waste avoidance; waste
minimization; 3M;