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Pollution and overuse of resources can affect everything from the health of children to the availability of raw materials. Increasingly, we are realizing the importance of not only meeting environmental regulations but also taking extra steps to reduce waste, prevent pollution, and conserve resources. As more communities choose to pursue sustainability, successful environmental programs will continue to emerge. These programs will become models on which to base global efforts to protect and restore the environment.

If your habits resemble those of average Americans, you generate about four pounds of solid trash per day. This adds up to big trouble for the environment. Americans are generating waste products faster than nature can break them down and using up resources faster than they can be replaced. How can we find ways to meet our current economic and social needs without compromising the ability of our children, and our children's children, to do the same? Our success will depend on understanding the difference between:

• Sustainable practices: practices that provide ongoing economic and social benefits without degrading the environment.
• Unsustainable practices: "quick fixes" that fill an immediate need for resources. Over time, however, these practices deplete or damage natural resources so they cannot be used or enjoyed by future generations.

Hazardous waste presents immediate or long-term risks to humans, animals, plants, or the environment. It requires special handling for detoxification or safe disposal. In the U.S., hazardous waste is legally defined as any discarded solid or liquid that:

• contains one or more of 39 carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic compounds at levels that exceed established limits (including many solvents, pesticides, and paint strippers)
• catches fire easily (such as gasoline, paints, and solvents)
• is reactive or unstable enough to explode or release toxic fumes (including acids, bases, ammonia, and chlorine bleach)
• is capable of corroding metal containers such as tanks, drums, and barrels (such as industrial cleaning agents and oven and drain cleaners). 

Businesses such as metal finishers, gas stations, auto repair shops, dry cleaners, and photo developers produce many toxic waste products. These by-products include sulfuric acid, heavy metals found in batteries, and silver-bearing waste, which comes from photo finishers, printers, hospitals, schools, dentists, doctors, and veterinarians. Heavy metals, solvents, and contaminated wastewater result from paint manufacturing. Photo processing also creates organic chemicals, chromium compounds, phosphates, and ammonium compounds. Even cyanide can be a by-product, resulting from electroplating and other surface-treatment processes.

If you think industry is the only source of hazardous waste, you may be surprised. There is hazardous household waste as well. For example, do you use any of the following items?

• automotive products, such as gasoline, antifreeze, and batteries
• oil-based paints and thinners
• pool chemicals
• pesticides, herbicides, and other garden products
• household cleaning products

There are nontoxic alternatives to many of these products that, when disposed of, do not constitute hazardous waste. Check with a local "green consumer" organization or find out more in the related resources section. Basically, there are two approaches to addressing the challenges of hazardous waste. One is waste management, and the other is waste prevention.

Waste management is based on the premise that a high volume of waste is the unavoidable result of our modern lifestyle and of economic development. The objective is therefore to manage waste and minimize its impact. Waste-management strategies include burying or incinerating waste or exporting it to some other state or country.

Preventing waste is a kind of "front-end" approach; it views waste either as material that should not be created in the first place or as a potential resource that can be used as raw material for another process. The fundamental objectives of this approach are to reduce the use of new raw materials and energy and to recycle waste products back into usable resources.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, the waste-prevention approach should have the following hierarchy of goals:

• Reduce waste and pollution.
• Reuse as many things as possible.
• Recycle and compost as much waste as possible.
• Chemically or biologically treat or incinerate waste that can't be reduced, reused, recycled, or composted.
• After the first four goals have been met, bury what is left in state-of-the-art landfills or above-ground vaults.

Each individual has a role in building a sustainable future. At home, school, and work, we can make changes that will help preserve our resources for future generations. Many individuals and communities have already begun - find out how you can do your part.

Courtesy: Race to Save the Planet

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