Despite the significant strides made in environmental protection over the past few decades in the United States, the regulatory approach taken has acknowledged drawbacks. The practice of controlling wastes at the end of the pipeline results in large quantities of wastes to dispose of, which gets expensive and usually leaves residual risks to human health and the environment. A more protective approach, if achievable, would be to prevent the creation of wastes in the first place.
Federal and state governments have developed elaborate systems of regulations to control the emission of pollutants. Most of these regulations are medium-specific in that they control discharges made in the air, water or on the land. Improvement in rivers and the more healthful air that we breathe are testaments to the successes of our environmental laws. But more can be accomplished if a protective approach is taken.
In the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. Section 13,101-09, Congress recognized the benefits of reducing or preventing pollution at its source. The act declares it to be the national policy of the United States to address environmental contamination in the following order:
� preventing or reducing pollution at the source;
� recycling contaminants in an environmentally safe manner;
� treating contaminants in an environmentally safe manner; and
� as a last resort, disposing of or otherwise releasing contaminants into the environment in an environmentally safe manner.
Source reduction includes any practice that reduces the amount of any hazardous substance entering a waste stream or the environment. Source reduction occurs before recycling, treatment or disposal and reduces hazards to the public health.
Various options exist to reduce the generation of wastes. Equipment or technology modifications, process or procedure modifications, reformulation or redesign of products, substitution of raw materials, and improvements in housekeeping, maintenance, training or inventory control are all possible techniques for reducing wastes at their source.
Indeed, one advantage of source reduction is that it affords wide latitude to businesses to invoke innovative practices based on companies’ knowledge of their own processes.
Although the Pollution Prevention Act codified pollution protection as a national goal, the act does not provide strong enforcement measures. Pollution prevention provisions in other statutes, such as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, likewise lack efficacy. Indeed, existing federal environmental laws often inhibit implementation of pollution prevention techniques.
The current regulatory focus on medium-specific programs restricts the ability of a company to take major pollution reduction strides in one medium if the result would be even small increases of pollution in another. For example, a change of process that would eliminate significant and harmful discharges to a stream while producing slightly increased air emissions may contravene air regulations that do not take offsetting benefits in other media into account.
To successfully transform our laws from mandating end-of-the-pipeline-technology controls to eliminating waste at its source, at least three fundamental issues must be addressed.
(1) The program should incorporate incentives to encourage companies to implement pollution prevention techniques. Companies require regulatory flexibility so that they can test innovative technologies and methods.
(2) The program should contain mechanisms to measure environmental performance. Otherwise, pollution prevention may be viewed as an industry effort to avoid environmental responsibilities.
(3) A complete pollution prevention program should provide for public participation in the setting of priorities and objectives. The community’s priorities may be to limit releases that are presenting the greatest risk to the public health or the environment rather than emissions that can be reduced most cost effectively.
BUSINESS INCENTIVES
One of the prime motivations for businesses to implement pollution prevention is to obtain the economic benefit that source reduction and other techniques can create. In the Pollution Prevention Act, Congress recognized that changes in production, operation and the use of raw materials might produce substantial savings in raw-material, pollution-control and liability while protecting the environment and reducing risks to worker health and safety.
Where economic benefits generate an acceptable return on investment, educational programs that allow new technologies to be disseminated to additional businesses within an industry sector can spread use of the technologies, thereby achieving significant environmental benefits.
Because developing and implementing new technologies are critical to effective source reduction, a source reduction program should promote technological innovation. Reducing pollution may require substitute raw materials, process modifications or new equipment.
Industry will be most inclined to make these changes where the rate of return on the capital investment involved is significant. Where economic benefit alone is insufficient to motivate these changes, the availability of regulatory incentives may be decisive.
The effect of existing regulations on technological innovation is mixed at best. On the one hand, by mandating use of certain technology-based controls or imposing heavy liabilities or costs on the disposal of waste, existing regulations do provide some incentives for waste reduction. The more burdensome the requirements of handling waste become, the more companies will seek to avoid waste creation. Nevertheless, if taken to extremes, the costs of such regulations would limit economic growth in unnecessary ways.
On the other hand, technology-based regulations can become quickly outdated and prevent the use of new technologies that might eliminate wastes. Companies vested in existing technologies are less likely to invest in development of new technologies where existing operations satisfy environmental requirements.
Finally, even where government regulators keep close watch on new developments, the delay and formality attending regulatory changes make it difficult for regulations to keep pace with technological changes.
Institutional impediments also limit implementation of source reduction strategies. Environmental managers are frequently located in separate departments focused on specific medium-based requirements.
Source reduction, on the other hand, requires the involvement of company employees knowledgeable about products, processes and raw materials. Where the environmental function is separate from the production function, it is difficult to make environmental protection a high priority among the process team members.
GUARANTEERING ACHIEVEMENTS
A second consideration in any pollution prevention plan is the mechanisms that will be put in place to ensure that source reduction or other pollution prevention techniques create net environmental benefits.
Environmentalists in particular may be concerned that shifting from medium-based regulation to pollution prevention strategies will allow continued or increased pollution from industry. Accordingly, mechanisms to measure environmental progress are important components of pollution prevention programs.
A measurement system encompassing all emissions across media may provide a good indication of the success of pollution prevention efforts. Multimedia measurement would consider all of the various offsetting increases and decreases in pollutants as process changes and equipment modifications are made. A well-designed measurement system would provide information necessary to assess net environmental benefits.
In addition, an environmental management system involving components such as measurable environmental objectives and performance targets, continual self-evaluation, corrective action and improvement, auditing, public involvement and senior management reviews might provide assurance that environmental progress will be made.
An environmental management system can incorporate environmental considerations into all aspects of a company’s operation, including product selection and improvement, customer and public relations, and risk management.
By making environmental decision-making part of business decision-making, strategic environmental management can work hand in hand with pollution prevention efforts.
Pollution prevention holds the promise of advancing environmental protection to the next level. Eliminating waste at its source is a more intelligent and often more economical alternative to end-of-pipe controls.
Nevertheless, crafting incentives for industry to develop and employ innovative technologies and methods, identifying the necessary steps to ensure that environmental improvement will occur and providing mechanisms for meaningful public involvement are all difficult tasks.
Whether the promise of pollution prevention will be realized may depend on the willingness of government, industry and citizens to collaborate in an effort to design a new regulatory program.
The author is chairman of the environmental practice group at Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen of Philadelphia, and is co-chairman of an EPA advisory committee work group on pollution prevention.
