Amendments to the Solid Waste Disposal Act, Prepared by the Staff for the Use of ... and Its Subcommittee on Public Health and Environment

In 1965 Congress first enacted the Federal Solid Waste Disposal Act (P.L. 89-272, title II). Prior to that legislation, sole responsibility for solid waste management was lodged in local and State governments. The 1965 Act authorized the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to conduct research, training, demonstrations of new waste disposal technology, technical assistance and to provide planning grants.

The Solid Waste Disposal Act was amended in 1970 by the Resource Recovery Act (P.L. 91-512). This legislation redirected the emphasis of the Act from solid "disposal" to recovery of energy and materials and recycling of solid wastes. Specifically, the 1970 amendments authorized demonstration grants for new resource recovery technology and required an annual report on incentives to promote recycling and resource recovery. In addition, the 1970 amendments provided for the creation of a National Commission on Materials Policy. The Resource Recovery Act of 1970 also required a study on a possible system of national disposal sites for hazardous wastes.

While the Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended, thus remained essentially non-regulatory in nature, it did provide for the issuance of recommended guidelines on solid waste recovery, collection, separation, and disposal. These recommended guidelines were to be binding on all executive agencies.

"Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970," a plan put into effect by Presidential Order without disapproval by either House of Congress, transferred all of the functions of the Secretary of HEW under the Solid Waste Disposal Act to the newly created Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1973, the Congress passed a one-year extension of existing authorizations under the Solid Waste Disposal Act (P.L. 93-14). In explaining the purpose of this extension, the committee reported stated

The Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce plans extensive oversight and legislative hearings on this act to examine the many policy issues which have arisen since passage of the act in 1970. Adequate time for responsible hearings is not available before June 30, 1973. Therefore, the Committee feels that a 1-year extension of the programs provided for in the act is necessary to allow their careful and responsible consideration. During the week of March 25, 1974, the Subcommittee on Public Health and Environment will conduct hearings on proposed amendments to the Solid Waste Disposal Act. This background document is intended to assist the Subcommittee in evaluating the existing Act, its implementation by EPA, and pending proposals for amendment of the Act.

(1)

2. THE PROBLEM OF SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCE

RECOVERY

The threshold task in deciding whether and how to amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act is defining the problem to be solved. Even this fairly obvious statement may be misleading, since "the solid waste management and resource recovery problem" may in fact be a variety of problems. As professors from the University of Michigan, College of Engineering, have written:

Of all the problems that arise from socio-technological development, solid-waste disposal is at once the simplest and the most complex. We all know what solid wastes are (or we think we do), and we all know how they're disposed of (why, they're, eh, burned-or are they buried?). Moreover we all have very firm, though seldom very detailed, ideas on how solid wastes should be disposed of (take 'em out and recycle 'em, close the loop, waste not want not, depletion ho, and so on). What could be simpler?

On the basis of such simple certainties, it's annoying to be told that our solid wastes are beginning to pose a problem, a very serious problem for which the solutions are not readily at hand. The annoyance may give way to alarm when we learn a little more about the problem, just enough to hear it described as one in which there is "so much opinion, so little data”—one in which the "relationships are complex, the disease pathways obscure, reliable methods of study scarce." Yet the more we learn about the problem, the more clearly we realize how apt that description is.

By any analysis, the problem of solid-waste disposal is notable for its sheer scatter. Just as the overall problem is concerned with thousands of heterogeneous material substances, so it comprises immaterial sub-problems that must be numbered also in the thousands. Some of these sub-problems are political, and raise questions of proper action at all levels-municipal, state, federal. Some are economic, and raise questions of manufacturing efficiencies, sales strategies, shortrange profits as against long-range resource allocation. Some are ecological, and raise questions of the growing mismatch between "natural" absorptive capacities of the environment and the "unnatural" demands being made upon them. Some are sociological, some aesthetic, and some inescapably private, having to do with individual aspirations toward the good life and individual decisions about what in fact the good life is.

And (last but not least) some of these sub-problems are technological. In comparison with space technology or medical technology, for example, the technology of solid-waste disposal remains under-developed. It remains so even in comparison with the technologies developed to combat air pollution and water pollution. The reason is clear. Until quite recently, solid-waste disposal was assigned priorities that were lowest of the low; society found no compelling reason to do otherwise. But during the 1960s very compelling reasons emerged for society to raise the priorities. By the end of the decade, solid-waste disposal had come to be known as the "third pollution," and in at least a few informed quarters had come to be regarded as ultimately more of a threat than the other two.1

In the section which follows, an attempt has been made to define the major problems in the field of solid waste management. In section three, some of the major recommendations for solving these problems are presented.

The proposed solutions, of course, tend to depend upon how the problem is defined. In general the solutions fall into three main categories: (1) provide for better disposal of wastes; (2) provide for greater recycling, reuse, or reclamation of wastes; and (3) provide for a decrease in the generation of wastes. Each of these general solutions raise a number of other questions.

1 Glysson, et al., The Problem of Solid-Waste Disposal, College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ingenor Series (1972), p. 1.

At the outset, however, defining "the problems" of solid waste management is the essential task.

(A) COLLECTION AND DISPOSAL

1. Council on Environmental Quality, First Annual Report (August 1970), pp. 109-113:

Residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial solid wastes are the clearest threats to health and to the environment. So they are the chief target of the waste disposal strategy. Most such waste comes from the urban areas and requires quick removal. It is increasing at a rate of about 4 percent a year.

Three facets of the production and discard of these growing mountains of solid waste materials need examination: solid waste handling, natural resource depletion, and litter and abandonment. Collection and disposal costs continue to spiral. This is partly because of wage hikes to bring the pay of sanitation workers more into line with other occupations. But even more, it is to pay for new collection equipment and landfill and dumping sites and, in some communities, to amortize incineration equipment. Researchers are beginning to examine what is entering the solid waste stream. Ultimately they hope to reduce unnecessary discard or even to restrict the manufacture of some items.

Natural resource management requires that minerals in shortest supply be identified and efforts made to cut the quantity discarded and to recycle whatever is collected. Some key minerals are already recycled to a considerable extent. More lead is pulled from scrap than from mined ores, and nearly half of the copper used today comes from scrap. However, for many natural resources, substantial Federal income tax incentives and other laws and policies encourage use of the virgin material instead and undercut the competitive position of recycled materials.

The litter problem-tires, bottles, cans, plastics, and paper thrown away randomly instead of into waste containers-adds daily to collection costs and blight. Many of the nation's roads, beaches, rivers, parks, and other public areas are cluttered with the refuse of thoughtless citizens. Litter collection costs average $88 per ton, more than four times as much as collecting residential refuse.

Collection methods

Refuse collection methods in most of the United States do not differ substantially from what they were when workers picked up the trash in horse-drawn wagons before the turn of the century. This lack of technological advance is particularly burdensome because up to 80 percent of the funds spent on solid waste management goes into collecting the waste and hauling it to a processing plant or a dump.

Disposal techniques

The final disposal point for an estimated 77 percent of all collected solid wastes is 14,000 open dumps in the country. Thirteen percent is deposited into properly operated sanitary landfills, where wastes are adequately covered each day with earth of the proper type. Nearly all of the remaining 10 percent is burned. Incinerators are used primarily

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Amendments to the Solid Waste Disposal Act, Prepared by the Staff for the ...