ial facilities.
Unfortunately, the waste materials that are no longer going into our streams and rivers or into the air are being deposited somewhere. These air and water improvements did not come from an elimination of the source material but simply from a redirection of the material. In some cases, commercial incinerators were used to reduce the amount of waste material into an ash that was disposed of in industrial landfills. Often the ash had higher concentration of contaminants than did the original material. The heat generated from this type of process was sometimes used to produced electrical power. More often than not, however, it was lost to the atmosphere and thus wasted.
Although the volume of materials being disposed of in the water and the air was reduced, wastes were simply being moved into landfills. Although some landfills are considered a secure and effective means of disposal, many sites have also added to the problem by adding to ground-water contamination through leaching and other percolating effects. Approximately 25 per cent of all landfills have been cited for regulatory violations, and 184 solid waste landfills are listed on the Superfund National Priority List.
Even secure landfill locations have limits regarding their effective life span because of eventual decomposition of liner materials. As a result, it is becoming painfully apparent that landfills are not an effective long-term solution to the waste problem.
In 1976, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was proposed in an effort to get industry to attack the problems of waste management with the same level of energy and tenacity that has been directed toward product development and/or manufacturing. The primary goal of RCRA has been to recycle waste material as much as is possible. Thus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set target goals for the reduction and possible elimination of landfilling. Additiona...