Making Pollution Prevention Work

A recent and widely accepted cultural change that affects laboratory work is the concept of pollution prevention. The idea is simplicity itself if one makes less waste, there is less waste to dispose of, and therefore less in5)act on the environment. A frequent, but not universal, corollary is that costs are also reduced. 

The perception that the industry has not been working hard to improve, is not borne out by the facts. An initiative named Responsible Care which is the chemical industry s commitment to continuous improvement in all aspects of health, safety and environmental protection was launched in Canada in 1984. It was adopted by the USA in 1988 and has been spreading around the world since then. Apart from North America and Europe which are discussed below, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India, Zimbabwe and other countries have adopted it [5]. The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) has drawn up guidelines which are given in Figure 1.1 [5]. In the UK, where the Chemical Industries Association (CIA) makes participation in the Responsible Care initiative a condition of membership, discharges of red list substances (compounds of mercury and cadmium, DDT, malathion, triphenyl and tributyl tin, etc.) fell by 40% between 1990 and 1992 whilst special wastes (compounds of arsenic, antimony, barium, mercury, nickel, vanadium, etc.) disposed of off site fell by 9% [6]. The Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) in the USA also makes participation a condition of membership and one of its Pollution Prevention Code requirements is very relevant to this book ... 

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