From the Desk of: John Smith

Environmental & Safety Training Manager Nebraska Safety Council

EPAs WASTE MINIMIZATION NATION PLAN SOFTWARE

The Environmental Protection Agency has just recently announced available help for those companies and facilities who are involved with reducing waste in their process or facility. To encourage Waste Minimization nationwide, the U.S. EPA worked with representatives from numerous stakeholder organizations to develop the "Waste Minimization National Plan", (WMNP), which focuses on reducing the generation and subsequent release to the environment of the most persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals in hazardous wastes. The WMNP established three goals:

1. Reduce, as a nation, the presence of the most persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals in hazardous wastes 25% by the year 2000, and 50% by the year 2005.
2. Avoid transferring these chemicals across environmental media, and
3. Ensure that these chemicals are reduced at their source whenever possible, or, when not possible, that they are recycled in an environmentally sound manner.

Stakeholders involved in development of the Waste Minimization Plan emphasized the need to prioritize source reduction and recycling based on risk and requires a flexible tool that would assist them to identify priorities. A Federal Register Notice in June of 1997 announced a series of software to assist companies in achieving their goals in waste minimization. EPA has released the Waste Minimization Prioritization Tool (WMPT), a Windows - based software program that provides a screening-level assessment. The following software is available through the EPAs Internet site free of charge at: http://www.epa.gov.

Available software includes:

• Draft Prioritization Chemical List

• Draft Chemical-RCRA Waste Code Crosswalk

• The Waste Minimization Nation Plan Brochure

• A Summary RCRA HazWaste Minimization Plan

Within the website, several other topics on pollution prevention, successful case studies, waste stream Characterization are available. This website is a must for those who are interested in reducing their generation of hazardous wastes and also reducing there generator liabilities.