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National Information |
Regional Information |
Waste
Nearly everything we do leaves behind some kind of waste. Households create ordinary garbage. Industrial and manufacturing processes create solid and hazardous waste. The Office of Solid Waste (OSW) regulates all this waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
RCRA's goals are to:
-Protect us from the hazards of waste disposal
-Conserve energy and natural resources by recycling and recovery
-Reduce or eliminate waste, and
-Clean up waste, which may have spilled, leaked, or been improperly disposed.
Hazardous waste comes in many shapes and forms. Chemical, metal, and furniture manufacturing are some examples of processes that create hazardous waste. RCRA tightly regulates all hazardous waste from "cradle to grave." RCRA also controls garbage and industrial waste. Common garbage is municipal waste, which consists mainly of paper, yard trimmings, glass, and other materials. Industrial waste is process waste that comes from a broad range of operations. Some wastes are managed by other federal agencies or state laws. Examples of such wastes are animal waste, radioactive waste, and medical waste.
Programs
In 1976, Congress enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) as the primary regulatory vehicle to assure that solid and hazardous wastes are properly managed, from the point of its generation to its ultimate disposal or destruction. Most RCRA implementation has been delegated to authorized state waste management programs. The EPA role is one of oversight and support for state actions.RCRA Subtitle C
Subtitle C establishes a federal program to manage hazardous wastes from cradle
to grave. The objective of this program is to ensure that hazardous waste is
handled in a manner that protects human health and the environment. RCRA establishes
a very complex and comprehensive set of requirements to define the materials
that are subject to hazardous waste regulation.
RCRA Subtitle D
Subtitle D focuses on state and local governments as the primary planning, regulating,
and implementing entities for the management of nonhazardous solid waste, such
as household garbage and nonhazardous industrial solid waste. EPA provides these
state and local agencies with information, guidance, policy and regulations
through workshops and publications to help states and the regulated community
make better decisions in dealing with waste issues, to reap the environmental
and economic benefits of source reduction and recycling of solid wastes, and
to require upgrading or closure of all environmentally unsound disposal units.
In order to promote the use of safer units for solid waste disposal, EPA developed
federal criteria for the proper design and operation of municipal solid waste
landfills (MSWLFs) and other solid waste disposal facilities. Many states have
adopted these criteria into their solid waste programs.
