ABSTRACT
The amount of waste generated in the United States has reached staggering proportions. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 250 million tons of solid waste alone are generated annually. Although both the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Hazardous and Solid Waste Act encourage businesses to minimize the wastes they generate, the majority of current environmental protection efforts are centered around treatment and pollution cleanup, not prevention. The passage of the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 has redirected industry's approach to environmental management; pollution prevention (P2) has now become the environmental option of this decade and the 21st century. A lifecycle analysis, or "Total Systems Approach," is crucial to identifying opportunities for manufacturing process performance improvement. The problems in this chapter stress the profound opportunities for both the individual and industry to prevent the generation of waste.
