ABSTRACT
During the Opportunity Assessment (OA), the team may identify some options that can be implemented quickly and with little cost or risk. Cost becomes important when student and professional reporters selecting pollution prevention actions from a list of opportunities, or when project justification must include economic cost/benefit data. Based on the steps student and professional reporters have completed, they have determined whether or not the pollution prevention opportunities should be implemented. The purpose of the OA phase is to develop a set of prevention options for each waste stream and then to identify the most attractive options that deserve a more detailed analysis. The OA is a very systematic approach to first understanding the existing or "as-is" process, then identifying opportunities to reduce the waste generated from the process. The OA team can draw a simple process mass balance diagram to understand what happens to the materials used in the process.
