Waste Treatment/Control

Combustion
Combustion, or incineration, is a widely-accepted waste treatment option with many benefits. Combustion reduces the volume of waste that must be disposed in landfills, and can reduce the toxicity of waste.

Corrective Action
Accidents or other activities at RCRA treatment, storage, and disposal facilities have sometimes released pollutants into soil, ground water, surface water, and air. This Web area provides information on Corrective Action, which allows facilities to address the investigation and cleanup of these hazardous releases themselves. It differs from Superfund in that it deals with sites that have viable operators and ongoing operations.

Definition of Solid Waste
This Web area provides useful and timely information to help federal, state, and industry officials implement Definition of Solid Waste Rule and hazardous waste recycling regulations.

E-Permitting Initiative
E-permitting means electronic permitting. The effectiveness and efficiency of the RCRA permitting program could be improved by assisting states that are investing in e-permitting systems, working with states to pilot RCRA e-permitting approaches, and facilitating the sharing of permit information with the public. This Web area contains e-tools that provide guidance on permitting activities ranging from preparing applications to issuing permits and compliance reporting.

Enforcement
EPA's Compliance and Enforcement Web area provides compliance assistance information on incentives, auditing, and monitoring, as well as civil cleanup and criminal enforcement.

Generators
A generator is any person, or site, whose processes and actions create hazardous waste. This Web area contains information about waste collection activities and guides visitors through the hazardous waste generator standards and regulations related to both large and small quantity generators.

Hazardous Waste
This Web page provides access to many RCRA hazardous waste activities, from air emissions to waste minimization.

Land Disposal Restrictions
This Web area is designed for OSW's Land Disposal Restrictions program, which works to minimize environmental threats from land disposal of hazardous waste by establishing treatment requirements. It helps generators as well as treatment, storage and disposal facilities (TSDFs) manage their hazardous waste properly. Regulators, such as states, and the public will find it helpful to learn how hazardous waste is managed.

Landfills/Disposal
Although source reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting can divert large portions of municipal solid waste (MSW) from disposal, some waste still must be placed in landfills. This Web page provides links to information about MSW landfills, combustion and household hazardous waste, as well as links to MSW landfill criteria, Federal Register Notices and publications.

Manifests
This Web area describes the Hazardous Waste Manifest System—a set of forms, reports, and procedures designed to track hazardous waste from the time it leaves the generator facility where it was produced, until it reaches the offsite waste management facility that will store, treat, or dispose of the hazardous waste.

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Nonhazardous Waste
This Web resource contains links to many RCRA nonhazardous waste activities, from batteries to solid waste recycling.

Permits and Permitting
This Web page describes activities related to the permitting of hazardous waste facilities, including public participation in the permitting process and the Program Accomplishment Reports under the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA).

Radioactive Mixed Waste
This Web page contains information on storage, treatment, transportation, and disposal of radioactive mixed waste, with a link to the Office of Air and Radiation, Radiation Protection Program Mixed Waste Team.

Safe Mercury Management
This Web area is a gateway to information about the treatment, disposal, and management of mercury and mercury wastes.

State Authorization
State authorization delegates the primary responsibility of implementing the RCRA hazardous waste program to individual states in lieu of EPA's Office of Solid Waste. This Web area contains state authorization and adoption status, checklists, and training and guidance manuals.

Test Methods
This Web area contains analytical and characteristic test methods, as well as environmental sampling, monitoring, and quality assurance procedures used in the RCRA program. They are found in EPA publication SW-846, "Test Methods for Evaluating Solid Waste, Physical/Chemical Methods."

Transporters
Hazardous waste transporters are individuals or entities that move hazardous waste from one site to another by highway, rail, water, or air. This Web area focuses on federal requirements for transporters by offering information about mercury-associated laws, regulations, and the regulatory development process.

Treatment, Storage, and Disposal
This Web page offers background information on different types of waste; describes treatment, storage, and disposal processes and related facts; and refers to publications and other data associated with waste treatment, storage, and disposal.

Universal Waste
This Web area discusses universal waste regulations; provides guidance on where to recycle this type of waste; and concentrates on technical issues of handling universal waste, targeting universal waste handlers, transporters, and destination facilities.

Waste Identification
This Web resource contains lists of regulations, studies, and information collection requests in response to waste listings determinations.

Waste Transfer Stations
Waste transfer stations are facilities where municipal solid waste is unloaded from collection vehicles and briefly held while it is reloaded onto larger long-distance transport vehicles for shipment to landfills or other treatment or disposal facilities. By combining the loads of several individual waste collection trucks into a single shipment, communities can save money on the labor and operating costs of transporting the waste to a distant disposal site.

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