By Marianne Lamont Horinko

A quarter of a century ago, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was created to promote waste minimization, recycling, and energy recovery.

More than two decades later, we have made progress in protecting public health and the environment. Hazardous-waste generation, for example, has been reduced from nearly 300 million to around 40 million tons annually. Some 48 states are now authorized to operate their own hazardous-waste programs, and more than 1,000 facilities are in the RCRA operating permit baseline.

Nationwide recycling and solid waste reduction efforts have diverted nearly 62 million tpy of trash from the wastestream, keeping that material in productive reuse and out of landfills. What’s more, we are now at a national recycling rate of 28%, up from a rate of 11% in the 1980s.

Despite great strides and dramatic improvements, we are continuing to refine and update our hazardous and solid waste management standards to deal with the numerous environmental challenges that await us, such as technological changes, population growth, economic expansion, and national security concerns. We continue to explore more proactive tools, including partnerships with industry and government, to build on the success already achieved.

In September 2002, EPA launched the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC). The RCC is a major cross-agency effort that identifies innovative, flexible, and more protective ways to conserve natural resources. These are accomplished by (1) promoting pollution prevention, recycling, and reuse of materials; (2) decreasing the release of toxic chemicals; and (3) conserving energy and materials.

But even more important, perhaps, is that the RCC is designed to help us achieve more results in reducing hazardous waste, keeping waste out of landfills, and increasing our national recycling rate.

Since we launched the RCC, a number of our efforts already have taken root. For example, a number of business and industry sectors have identified harmful chemicals they want to reduce and have signed on as Waste Minimization Partners. Coal Combustion Products Partnerships are reusing coal ash in products such as cement instead of landfilling them. The Plug Into eCycling Partnerships are finding ways to recycle old electronics. The Waste Minimization Partners builds on the success of our oldest partnership program, WasteWise, which now has more than 1,200 partners that recycled 3 million–plus tons of waste and prevented in excess 491 tons of waste from disposal. Over the last 12 months, EPA has held 45 e-cycling events in 31 cities and counties in the Mid-Atlantic States, and collected more than 2,100 tons of electronics. Moreover, we’ve prevented 21,000-plus televisions and computer monitors from going into landfills. These are the most hazardous products because of the amount of lead they contain. Private-sector partners are committed to holding more collection events in the future.

Helping people see how our purchases and manufacturing decisions are connected to the environment can help them make more informed choices. Two major educational campaigns urge urban African Americans to reduce and recycle waste. Another campaign encourages and helps Hispanic Americans to recycle used motor oil using bilingual materials.

In addition, we are exploring new approaches to dealing with waste that will make EPA waste programs more efficient and effective and allow us to measure and analyze the results and then spread the word around the country so others can learn from the experiments. The “innovation pilots” test ideas and strategies that will demonstrate the environmental and economic benefits of creativity and innovation in dealing with today’s environmental challenges. One innovation pilot we are conducting in partnership with the Industrial Design Society of America will hold workshops and develop a Web site to improve awareness among engineers and designers of the highly credible and easy-to-use methods for reducing the environmental impacts of products. The pilot will look at the entire product life cycle, including choice of raw materials and manufacturing processes. Another innovation pilot with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is researching and demonstrating specific green practices that transit authorities can implement to directly reduce waste, increase recycling, and use recycled content in building materials. BART, one of the largest parking facility owners in California, piloted a parking garage energy conservation technology at one garage, resulting in the projected annual energy savings of 97,090 kWh and a 1.8-year simple return on investment.

The RCC and the innovation pilots are just two examples of our efforts to promote and encourage waste minimization, recycling, and energy recovery. I believe that the lessons learned from these approaches will transform the way we do business and make this planet cleaner and safer for future generations.

Marianne Lamont Horinko is acting administrator for the United States Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC.

MSW - September/October 2003