EPA Revises-and Improves-the Definition of Solid Waste

摘要

The final rule was worth the wait. For many, many years, EPA has struggled to find the right balance under RCRA Subtitle C between strictly regulating activities that seemed to be "waste treatment"-like and exempting from regulation activities that truly reclaim secondary materials in a beneficial way.rnIn years past, EPA's overreaching under earlier versions of its solid-waste definition has discouraged companies from legitimately recycling secondary materials, blunted opportunities for beneficially reusing and/or recycling such materials, and otherwise frustrated RCRA's core goal of encouraging recycling and reclamation. The road to reason has not been easy, and the many legal challenges to the earlier version of the rule have been painfully expensive and slow.