Recycling Hazardous Waste: How RCRA has Recyclers Running Around in CERCLAS


 

Publication Date: October 1995

Publisher: Reason Foundation

Author(s): Alexander Volokh

Research Area: Environment

Type: Report

Abstract:

Is hazardous waste recycling a good idea? Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. We certainly don't want too much recycling of hazardous waste--not if it wastes more resources than it saves. But we don't want to artificially discourage it either by making recycling more expensive than landfilling. Yet the federal government is doing exactly that--even while it's trying to encourage recycling in general, it's discouraging the recycling of hazardous waste. Hazardous waste law is expensive, irrational, and confusing, and the sad part of it is that RCRA and Superfund were originally enacted to help the environment.