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Strategic Objective
Preserve Land
Strategic Objective
Overview
To prevent future environmental contamination and to protect the health of the estimated 20 million people living within a mile of hazardous waste management facilities[1], EPA and its state partners continue their efforts to issue, update, or maintain Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permits for approximately 20,000 hazardous waste units (such as incinerators and landfills) at these facilities. EPA also will issue polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) cleanup, storage, and disposal approvals each year since this work cannot be delegated to the states or tribes. With the October 2012 promulgation of the Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest Establishment Act, improving and modernizing hazardous waste transportation and tracking has become an important Agency focus. EPA will be working with state agencies, other partners and stakeholders, and the public to implement the requirements of the new law. These include the use of electronic tracking (e-Manifest), which will provide superior data availability, transparency, and cost savings when compared with the use of paper manifests, and the establishment of an advisory board to provide recommendations to the Agency on the implementation of this new e-Manifest approach.
As part of its sustainable materials management program, EPA is currently promoting three national strategies—the Federal Green Challenge, the Electronics Challenge, and the Food Recovery Challenge. These strategies are focused on using less environmentally intensive and toxic materials and employing downstream solutions, like reuse and recycling, to conserve our resources for future generations.[2] EPA is working with other federal agencies, state and tribal governments, and non-governmental organizations to promote sustainability goals through these and other initiatives. For example, EPA and USDA are partnering through the U.S. Food Waste Challenge to address sustainable food management from farm to final disposition.[3] Through this partnership, EPA is working to reduce food waste, which is the largest component (21 percent) of municipal solid waste discarded.[4] In keeping with the RCRA mandate to conserve resources and energy, and recognizing that an estimated 42 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to materials management activities, EPA continues to create innovative strategies that emphasize sustainable materials management. These efforts—to identify and reduce or minimize the impact of waste and capture resultant GHG benefits through more sustainable materials management throughout all life-cycle stages (from extraction of raw materials through end of life)—are critical, along with other activities, for offsetting the use of virgin materials.[5,6]
To reduce the risk posed by underground storage tanks (USTs) located at more than 200,000 facilities throughout the country, EPA and states are working to ensure that every UST system is inspected at least once every 3 years and all facility operators are trained. As fuel types change, UST systems must be equipped to safely store the new fuels. For example, EPA is working to ensure biofuels are stored in compatible UST systems.
External Factors and Emerging Issues
EPA must be prepared to address significant waste management issues anticipated for the future.
- The potential impacts of a changing climate, including extreme weather events, such as tornadoes and hurricanes.
- Continued changes in technology and the emergence of new waste streams that result from new methods of domestic energy development, among other contributing sources.
- General trend away from landfills and toward the recycling of materials using new technologies that will require further evaluation.
Endnotes:
- Estimate drawn from OSWER Near Site Population Database, an internal EPA database that merges facility size and location information from RCRAInfo with population data, at the block and block group levels, from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2000 Census. The demographics were captured around the total number of facilities that have approved controls in place that result in the protection of this population (20 million people).
- For more information on the Federal Green Challenge, see http://www.epa.gov/federalgreenchallenge. For more information on the Electronics Challenge, see http://www.epa.gov/wastes/conserve/smm/electronics/. For more information on the Food Recovery Challenge, see http://www.epa.gov/wastes/conserve/smm/foodrecovery/.
- For more information on the U.S. Food Waste Challenge, see http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/index.htm.
- For more information, see EPA report, “Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2011,” at http://www.epa.gov/waste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_508_053113_fs.pdf.
- USEPA, Opportunities to Reduce or Avoid Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land Management Practices, September 2009.
- For more information on sustainable materials management, see Sustainable Materials Management: The Road Ahead. EPA 530R-09-009. Available at http://www.epa.gov/smm/pdf/vision2.pdf.
Progress Update
The long-term vision of this objective is to prevent accidental releases that contaminate land, air, and water and can adversely affect human health, and to change the way our society thinks about materials and their associated environmental impacts. Through a Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) approach, EPA is helping to change the way our society protects the environment and conserves resources for future generations. Building on the familiar “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” concept, SMM aims to reduce negative environmental impacts across the life cycle of materials, from resource extraction and manufacturing to use, reuse, recycling, and disposal. SMM approaches can result in lower energy use; more efficient use of materials; more efficient movement of goods and services; water conservation; and reduced volume and toxicity of waste. While EPA is striving for SMM, EPA works to ensure that when materials reach the true end of life, they are disposed of properly and safely.
In FY 2014, EPA continued to make progress toward the strategic goals that advance this vision. Specifically, EPA continued to make significant progress developing and implementing a targeted SMM program centered on three challenge areas: responsible management of used electronics, sustainable food management, and reducing the environmental footprint of the federal government. Furthermore, the Agency completed a methodology to evaluate the potential uses of coal combustion residues (CCR), commonly known as coal ash, and applied this methodology to the two most common beneficial uses of CCRs—uses in concrete and wallboard. Reusing coal ash in a product replaces virgin raw materials removed from the earth, thus conserving natural resources. Not only were these products useful to ensure that reuse of CCRs is appropriate but they can be valuable tools for EPA, states, and other stakeholders in evaluating future beneficial uses of industrial materials moving the science and practice of beneficial use forward.
In FY 2014, EPA also issued the E-Manifest One-Year Rule to authorize the use of electronic hazardous waste manifests. This allows the current process (which requires paper forms) to be streamlined, greatly reducing the millions of paper manifests produced each year. EPA also completed an Agency-wide plan to provide solid waste management capacity assistance to Tribes that promotes the development and implementation of integrated waste management plans and describes how EPA will prioritize its resources to maximize environmental benefits. The Plan implements the recommendations made by a March 2011 EPA Office of Inspector General Evaluation Report, EPA Needs an Agency-Wide Plan to Provide Tribal Solid Waste Management Capacity Assistance.
Finally, given that preventing underground storage tank (UST) releases is the best way to ensure that our communities are clean and safe, and also prevent sites from being abandoned, the Agency also engaged in rigorous UST release prevention efforts—as shown by the 2014 performance results for the two UST prevention measures. States have successfully implemented the new tools from the Energy Policy Act of 2005: requiring all new tank systems have secondary containment; using the new delivery prohibition enforcement tool; providing an annual “public record” for their tanks programs; and ensuring all operators are trained. Since the increase in frequency of tank inspections, compliance rates have increased to 71.6 percent—a 5.6 percent increase since FY 2009—and the number of new releases is generally trending downward.
