Environmental Health & Safety

EH&S Home
Emergencies 
MSDS/Links
Training
Shipping
Search

Pollution Prevention & Waste Minimization

What Is Pollution Prevention?

The EPA essentially equates pollution prevention with source reduction—preventing pollution before it is created, so there is less need to control, treat, or dispose of it. The EPA clarified the definition of pollution prevention in a memo from the Deputy Administrator in May 1992. It is critical that we maintain this focus on source reduction, especially as environmental and other federal policy increasingly embraces sustainable development concepts.

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 made pollution prevention (P2) the national environmental policy of the United States. Again, at EPA, pollution prevention means source reduction—preventing or reducing waste where it originates, at the source—including practices that conserve natural resources by reducing or eliminating pollutants through increased efficiency in the use of raw materials, energy, water, and land. The EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) works to promote pollution prevention both inside and outside the agency. This is done in several ways, such as using voluntary pollution reduction programs, engaging in partnerships, providing technical assistance, funding demonstration projects and incorporating cost-effective pollution prevention alternatives into regulations and other initiatives.

What is Waste Minimization?

Waste minimization is reducing waste at its source, before it is even generated (called source reduction) and then using environmentally sound recycling methods. Even when hazardous wastes are stringently regulated and managed, they may sometimes pose environmental concerns; accidents during handling and transportation of hazardous wastes can result in releases to the environment. The EPA and the public devote billions of dollars annually to cleaning up contamination from past mismanagement of chemical wastes and properly managing wastes that are currently being generated. Better efforts to reduce chemical waste before it is even generated would help lessen these concerns, as well as the need for these public and private expenditures on cleanups in the future.