Hazardous Waste

Published in Taiwan 2000, Balancing economic growth and environmental protection, 1989

Prevention rather than cure

Edited by the Steering Committee Taiwan 2000 Study, Taipeh, Taiwan, Republic of China

1. The Emerging Problem of Hazardous Wastes

In the West, especially in the United States and Europe, hazardous waste has become increasingly a major pollutant of air, water, and soil.

Three major obstacles exist when addressing this problem:

• Insufficient data are available on where and how much hazardous waste is being produced.
• The most common approach, specially in the United States but also in Europa has been to concentrate on waste management and end-of-pipe treatment.
• The regulatory measures are administratively costly and in many instances ineffective.

Beyond the need to clean up all the already existing heavily contaminated dumping sites—the cost of which exceeds US$100 in the West alone-the problem of future management of hazardous wastes is very urgent.

The production of organic chemicals represents the fastest-growing sector of the chemical industry and, in the United States, responsible for approximately 60% of all toxic pollution of air, water, and soil. Of all the money spent on pollution control in the United States, (some US$70 billion in 1986) 99% was spent on managing waste produced and just on reducing waste at the source.

This report offers a survey of the hazardous waste problems in the West, an assessment of the U.S. situation, U.S. proposal recently drafted by a nonprofit U.S. organization on how to change the emphasis in hazardous wastes from pollution control to pollution prevention, and some recommendations on dealing with the current and future problem of hazardous waste in Taiwan.

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