One Hundred Years of Environmental Law and Policy: Waste

People have always known that someone has to take out the trash. Keeping solid waste where you live is just not a good idea. And so, from the earliest days of human settlements, we have had rules about waste disposal. However, only in our lifetimes have we come to grips with the notion that there is no "away" in which to throw that waste. We have learned to take as much care with our waste streams as with our product streams. Waste management is a major business and its technologies increasingly affect how the design of all sorts of other processes. This program will briefly review the history of solid waste regulation in America, and then turn to the evolution of landfills from "natural renovation" to "bioreactor," the development of special hazardous waste regulation, the rise and fall of waste flow control, recycling and reuse as centerpieces of waste management policy, and the remediation of past inappropriate waste disposal practices under the Superfund, Corrective Action, and state voluntary response programs.