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Toxic waste is any unwanted material in all forms that can cause harm. Many of today's household products such as televisions, computers and phones contain toxic chemicals that can pollute the air and contaminate soil and water. Disposing of such waste is a major public health issue.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), enacted in 1976, is the principal federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.
Green chemistry, also called sustainable chemistry, is an area of chemistry and chemical engineering focused on the design of products and processes that minimize or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. While environmental chemistry focuses on the effects of polluting chemicals on nature, green chemistry focuses on the environmental impact of chemistry, including reducing consumption of nonrenewable resources and technological approaches for preventing pollution.
In environmental law, the polluter pays principle is enacted to make the party responsible for producing pollution responsible for paying for the damage done to the natural environment. It is regarded as a regional custom because of the strong support it has received in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and European Union countries. It is a fundamental principle in US environmental law.
Pollution prevention (P2) is a strategy for reducing the amount of waste created and released into the environment, particularly by industrial facilities, agriculture, or consumers. Many large corporations view P2 as a method of improving the efficiency and profitability of production processes by waste reduction and technology advancements. Legislative bodies have enacted P2 measures, such as the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 by the United States Congress.
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) is the public utilities commission of the U.S. state of Ohio, charged with the regulation of utility service providers such as those of electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications as well as railroad safety and intrastate hazardous materials transport.
Ohio Citizen Action is an advocacy group representing 32,000 members throughout Ohio. Over its history the organization has worked on issues as diverse as single-payer healthcare, expanding access to organic produce in grocery stores and speeding Ohio's embrace of a just and equitable clean energy economy. The organization was founded in Cleveland in 1975 as the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (OPIC), a coalition of union, senior citizen, church, and community organizations. Responding to a wave of factory closings in Northeast Ohio, the coalition proposed state legislation to require advance notice to employees before a closing (1977). The Ohio legislature balked, so U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) sponsored it as a federal bill. It became federal law in 1988. In 1989, the Ohio Public Interest Campaign changed its name to Ohio Citizen Action to reflect its change from a coalition to a membership organization. Their headquarters is located in the Rockefeller Building in downtown Cleveland.
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control is an agency of the government of the state of California. The mission of the DTSC is to protect public health and the environment from toxic harm. DTSC is part of the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA), has more than one thousand employees, and is headquartered in Sacramento. DTSC also has a number of regional offices across the state including two environmental chemistry laboratories, and field offices in Sacramento, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Chatsworth, Commerce, Cypress, Clovis (Fresno), San Diego and Calexico.
Title 40 is a part of the United States Code of Federal Regulations. Title 40 arranges mainly environmental regulations that were promulgated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), based on the provisions of United States laws. Parts of the regulation may be updated annually on July 1.
Arjun Makhijani is an electrical and nuclear engineer who is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Makhijani has written many books and reports analyzing the safety, economics, and efficiency of various energy sources. He has testified before Congress and has served as an expert witness in Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceedings.
The environmental policy of the United States is a federal governmental action to regulate activities that have an environmental impact in the United States. The goal of environmental policy is to protect the environment for future generations while interfering as little as possible with the efficiency of commerce or the liberty of the people and to limit inequity in who is burdened with environmental costs. As his first official act bringing in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon signed the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) into law on New Years Day, 1970. Also in the same year, America began celebrating Earth Day, which has been called "the big bang of U.S. environmental politics, launching the country on a sweeping social learning curve about ecological management never before experienced or attempted in any other nation." NEPA established a comprehensive US national environmental policy and created the requirement to prepare an environmental impact statement for “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the environment.” Author and consultant Charles H. Eccleston has called NEPA, the world's “environmental Magna Carta”.
The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, includes all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth.
The environmental impact of paper is significant, which has led to changes in industry and behaviour at both business and personal levels. With the use of modern technology such as the printing press and the highly mechanized harvesting of wood, disposable paper became a relatively cheap commodity, which led to a high level of consumption and waste. The rise in global environmental issues such as air and water pollution, climate change, overflowing landfills and clearcutting have all lead to increased government regulations. There is now a trend towards sustainability in the pulp and paper industry as it moves to reduce clear cutting, water use, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel consumption and clean up its impacts on local water supplies and air pollution.
Waste management laws govern the transport, treatment, storage, and disposal of all manner of waste, including municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, and nuclear waste, among many other types. Waste laws are generally designed to minimize or eliminate the uncontrolled dispersal of waste materials into the environment in a manner that may cause ecological or biological harm, and include laws designed to reduce the generation of waste and promote or mandate waste recycling. Regulatory efforts include identifying and categorizing waste types and mandating transport, treatment, storage, and disposal practices.
There are many exemptions for hydraulic fracturing under United States federal law: the oil and gas industries are exempt or excluded from certain sections of a number of the major federal environmental laws. These laws range from protecting clean water and air, to preventing the release of toxic substances and chemicals into the environment: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund.
The Solid Waste Disposal Act(SWDA), is an Act of Congress passed in 1965. The United States Environmental Protection Agency described the Act as "the first federal effort to improve waste disposal technology". After the industrial revolution, the change in quality of living caused an increase in solid waste generation. The act established a framework for states to better control solid waste disposal and set minimum safety requirements for landfills. In the 1970s, Congress decided that SWDA was not enough to properly manage the nation's waste and passed The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which amended and superseded SWDA. Other amendments to SWDA include RCRA Subpart S for remedial investigation and The Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendment (HSWA).
David Zilberman is an Israeli-American economist, professor and Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Zilberman has been a professor in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at UC Berkeley since 1979. His research has covered a range of fields including the economics of production technology and risk in agriculture, agricultural and environmental policy, marketing and more recently the economics of climate change, biofuel and biotechnology. He won the 2019 Wolf Prize in Agriculture, was the President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA), and is a Fellow of the AAEA and Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. David is an avid blogger on the Berkeley Blog and a life-long Golden State Warriors fan.
Climate change has worsened at the hands of human activity for centuries, and many scientific efforts have been made since the first political acknowledgment. In order to avoid the ongoing and potential impacts of climate change, mitigation technologies have been developed in order to adapt to the issue, each invention belonging to one of four specific groups of effort. These groups include energy efficiency improvements, renewable energy (RE), nuclear power/energy (NE), and carbon capture storage (CCS). However, concerns regarding mitigating and adapting to climate change commonly have a priority focus on the groups of carbon capture storage and renewable energy efforts.
Indian environmental law concerns the law and policy of India concerning the protection of the environment, measures taken to reverse climate change and achieve a zero carbon economy.
References
- 1 2 3 "Faculty page". Suffolk University Law School. Retrieved 25 May 2013.
