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RCRA National Meeting Focuses on Resource Conservation Challenge
More than one thousand environmental regulators met to discuss waste management issues at the 2003 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) National Meeting, held August 12-15 in Washington, DC. Participants took this opportunity to attend more than one hundred topical sessions, including a mock trial, roundtable discussions, and several lively debates.This event highlighted EPA's Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC), a major national effort to find flexible ways to conserve our valuable resources through pollution prevention, waste reduction and energy recovery activities.
Internationally renowned designer William McDonough delivered the opening keynote address on cradle-to-cradle stewardship, making the case that system and product design can be both environmentally sound, as well as socially and economically valuable.
In his opening remarks, Barry Breen, Acting Assistant Administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, told participants that the Resource Conservation Challenge infuses waste reduction efforts "with a deeper sense of shared responsibility and partnership." "We've developed a whole new attitude toward waste," Breen said. "In many cases it's not inevitable. It can be reduced, minimized, eliminated, sometimes in ways that pay for themselves. And in some cases waste can be reused, thus saving the cost of disposal."
In a special session, EPA honored the newest members of the Waste Minimization Partnerships Program, including Dupont, General Electric, Uniseal Incorporated, U.S. Steel, Hewlett Packard Caribe, and the Tobyhanna Army Depot (the program's first federal facility to enroll.) The program encourages generators of secondary materials and waste materials to join in a voluntary partnership with EPA and States to establish goals to reduce and minimize the generation of wastes, particularly wastes containing any of 39 waste minimization priority chemicals. This one-year-old program now has 14 members from across the country.
In addition, Ashland Incorporated was also recognized for taking the Environmental Indicator pledge, committed to meeting both the Human Exposures Under Control environmental indicator and the Mitigation of Contaminated Groundwater Under Control environmental indicator at all twenty-one of their facilities.
Session topics at the conference included:
- Hazardous waste import and export;
- Converting landfills to clean energy generation stations;
- Cell phone and beverage container industry responsibility for recycling their products;
- The Hudson River cleanup;
- Energy for the future; and
- The role of gasification technologies in providing sustainable energy.
In one session, the audience was asked to participate as the jury in a mock trial, during which a property owner sought to defend his possession of potentially hazardous material by claiming it was necessary for his business.
The 2003 RCRA National Meeting was co-sponsored by EPA, Air
& Waste Management Association, Solid Waste Association
of North America, International City/County Management Association,
and the Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management
Officials. Conference proceedings will be made available through
the Air and Waste Management
Association 
.