Waste management legislation

Handbook on the Implementation of EC Environmental Legislation - Section 4 - Waste Management Legislation - Waste Management Overview - Period 2003-2007,2008. Available from http //ec.europa.eu/environment/enlarg/handbook/intro.pdf (accessed Sept-2013) [Online]. 

Much of the current activity in the field of sohd waste management, especially with respect to hazardous wastes and resources recoveiy, is a direct consequence of recent legislation. Therefore, it is important to review the principal legislation that has affected the entire field of solid-waste management. 

Federal Legislation Related to Solid Waste Management... 

Moran, M. D. (1997). Evaluation of the impact of North American SO2 emission control legislation on the attainment of SO critical loads in eastern Canada. Paper 97-TA 28.05, 90th AWMA Annual Meeting, Air Waste Management Association, Pittsburgh. 

It is briefly reported that the European Commission will issue a White Paper on PVC within the next couple of months. The Paper will probably be a mix of both legislation and voluntary commitments. A Green Paper on PVC was adopted by the EC in July 2000. This raised six issues to be addressed substitution, production process, cadmium stabilisers, lead stabilisers, phthalates and waste management. 

On the state level, the interplay of plastics and legislation began in 1978 with the introduction of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beverage bottle. In a relatively short time, nine states introduced Tx)ttle bills," or deposit laws on the return of plastic bottles. In these states, the deposit laws account for collection of an estimated 80 to 95% of the PET bottles sold. At present, at least 30 states are looking into some sort of waste management legislation involving plastics. 

Public perception and the resulting trends in legislation have led manufacturers of plastics and plastic products to realize that they either have to act and get involved with the issue or be prepared to shoulder much of the blame for the solid waste crisis and face tremendous restrictions on their industry. The companies initial responses included the formation of both internal divisions and cooperative industry associations to approach the issues of plastics recycling and solid waste management. 

The Strasbourg test is performed under much more drastic conditions of corrosion than the corrosion test described by the Swiss Waste Management Ordinance for disposal of residues in landfills for inert materials (coarsely ground samples reacted with CC>2-saturated water during 24 h at room temperature BUWAL 1990). Nevertheless, we observed that the released metals never reached the maximum permissible concentrations set by Swiss legislation for inert materials (Table 1). By comparison,... 

The main driving force towards recycling has been national and international plastic waste management policy. Within the EU, the policy is based on waste hierarchy, meaning that the first choice is waste prevention and then waste recovery (reuse, recycling and energy recovery), with preference to material recovery. Thus the type of legislation found is ... 

Solid Waste Disposal Act, 1965 Modern solid-waste legislation dates from 1965, when the Solid Waste Disposal Act, Title II of Public Law 88-272, was enacted by Congress. The principal intent of this act was to promote the demonstration, construction, and application of solid waste management and resource-recovery systems that preserve and enhance the quality of air, water, and land resources. 

There are profound opportunities for both industry and the individual to prevent the generation of waste indeed, pollution prevention is today primarily stimulated by economics, legislation, liability concerns, and the enhanced environmental benefit of managing waste at the source. The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 established pollution prevention as a national policy, declaring that waste should be prevented or reduced at the source wherever feasible, while pollution that cannot be prevented should be recycled in an environmentally safe manner (Ref. 1). The EPA s policy establishes the following hierarchy of waste management ... 

The recent development in the E U legislation concerning the necessity for reducing chromate in cement [2.32] might also have impact on the waste management from the chloride process. By turning the waste metal chlorides into FeS04 with sulfuric... 

Today, however, waste management has turned into a fashionable legislation-driven business, a responsibility of top management, as part of the environmental profile of each corporation, and requiring expert knowledge in Law, Ethics, Politics and Sustainable Development. Operators belong to the world s largest service companies. 

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