Government Programs
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been recognizing waste as an essential environmental issue for over three decades now. Over the years, they’ve developed a number of programs—and gathered a staggering amount of information—related to various aspects of waste management, from prevention to disposal. Their policies all align with a hierarchy of priorities in dealing with Municipal Solid Waste. The EPA’s Solid Waste Hierarchy states: “source reduction (including reuse) is the most preferred method, followed by recycling and composting, and, lastly, disposal in combustion facilities and landfills.” Essentially, the goal is to prevent as much waste as possible from winding up in landfills and incinerators, by first curtailing the input of waste materials into the system, and then recovering—through recycling or composting—everything possible.
Source Reduction
The first line of defense against of the proliferation of waste, in the EPA’s strategy, is “source reduction,” otherwise known as “waste prevention.” By the EPA’s definition, source reduction “refers to any change in the design, manufacture, purchase, or use of materials or products (including packaging) to reduce their amount or toxicity before they become municipal solid waste. Source reduction also refers to the reuse of products or materials.” So, in application, the strategy of source reduction hinges on convincing producers to reduce packaging and improve the design of goods to create less eventual waste, as well as bringing to market more durable, less disposable goods, and also creating incentives and systems that help the consumer reuse products, materials and goods that can be given a further life.
The concept of source reduction, while simple enough in theory, has only recently been planned for and practiced aggressively on the federal level. By all indications, the EPA’s strategy is starting to work. One statistic in particular emphasizes the relative success of the recent focus on “source reduction.” In the 30 years from 1960 to 1990, the amount of waste produced by the average American nearly doubled from 2.7 to 4.5 pounds per day. As mentioned earlier, this number is now 4.6, having more or less leveled off in the past fifteen-plus years. Keep in mind that this per capita stat includes all materials that are thrown out, including recyclable goods. Thus this freeze in per capita waste production doesn’t even account for ever-increasing recycling rates, and is really representative of less eventual waste entering the system to begin with.
A couple of revealing stats about source reduction, courtesy of the EPA:
- More than 55 million tons of MSW were source reduced in the United States in 2000, the latest year for which these figures are available.
- Containers and packaging represented approximately 28% of the materials source reduced in 2000, in addition to nondurable goods (e.g., newspapers, clothing) at 17%, durable goods (e.g., appliances, furniture, tires) at 10%, and other MSW (e. ....read more
