United States	Pollution Prevention Office	February 1989
Environmental Protection	Washington, DC 20460	Volume I
Agency
&ERA Pollution
Prevention
News
Inside:
2
3
4
Reports from
EPA Offices:
OSW, ORDi
EPA's Pilot
Tests New
E-Board
Interview with
Jerry Hotas,
Director of
EPA's Pollution
Prevention
Office
Waste
Minimisation
Workshops
or comments tot
U& EPA
401 M Street SW, CPM-Z19)
Washington, DC 20460
Editor's Corner
Welcome to the first issue of Pollution Pre-
vention News! As EPA's pollution prevention
program gets underway, we hope to bring you
news of our activities and of promising efforts in
pollution prevention around the country.
In September 1988, EPA set up a new Pollu-
tion Prevention Office with Jerry Kotas at the
helm. (See the interview on page 3.) The aim
of the office is just what it sounds — to help
prevent pollution before it becomes a problem.
For the last few months, our small staff has been
getting out and meeting people across the coun-
try who have been active in pollution preven-
tion.
Frankly, we have been extremely impressed
with the initiative, creativity, and commitment
we have seen in state governments, industry
"We need to get
the word out that
prevention makes both
good business sense and
good environmental sense."
leaders, and public interest organizations. It
quickly became apparent to us that a great deal
of progress has already been made on this issue,
See page 4 "Editor"
Applications Received for $3M
in State Multi-media Grants
EPA is currently reviewing applications for
$3 million in incentive grants to states for
source reduction and recycling technical assis-
tance programs. Funds will be awarded to states
to initiate or expand programs in all stages of
development, from states with established pol-
lution prevention programs to states needing
start-up funds. Activities eligible for funding
include providing direct technical assistance to
industry; conducting demonstration activities;
training; promoting waste exchange programs;
and developing industry-specific manuals.
EPA received 45 applications for the grants,
and expects to make awards to 10-15 states in
amounts not exceeding $300,000. The selec-
tion process is being handled by an 11-person
panel, made up of five members from headquar-
ters program offices and six members from the
EPA regional offices. An announcement of
awards is expected shortly.
A second round of state multi-media grants
will be made in 1989 with an additional $4
million appropriated by Congress. Information
on applications and evaluation criteria will be
available in early 1989, with awards hopefully
to be made by the summer. For further informa-
tion on the multi-media grants program, con-
tact Jackie Krieger at the Pollution Prevention
Office, U.S. EPA, (202) 252-0834.
In 1988, EPA announced the award of over
$3.6 million to 14 state environmental agencies
under theRCRAIntegratedTraining andTech-
nical Assistance (RITTA) initiative. Fundsare
intended to support training programs in haz-
ardous waste management and pilot technical
assistance projects for the industrial commu-
nity focusing on waste minimization. For more
information on RITTA grants, please contact
Kate Connors, Office of Solid Waste and Emer-
gency Response, U.S. EPA, (202) 475-9741.
Printed on 100% Recycled Paper

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Pollution Prevention News - 2
January 1989
Reports from EPA Offices
Office of Solid Waste
After monthsof meetings with states, in-
dustries, waste management experts, and
citizen groups, in September 1988 EPA
proposed a national strategy for handling
the nation's growing volume of solid waste.
The strategy targets 2 5 percent of municipal
solid waste for recycling and reduction over
the nextfour years. The strategy, called" An
Agenda for Action," was prepared by the
Municipal Solid Waste Task Force of the
Office of Solid Waste.
Last year, the nation produced 160 mil-
lion tons of solid waste, nearly 3.5 pounds
per person each day. In the last decade, over
12,000 landfills have closed and fewer than
1000 have opened. In 10 years, half the re-
maining 6,000 municipal landfills in the
country will be full to capacity.
The strategy outlines a five-point plan to
deal with the upcoming crisis in managing
waste disposal. The recommendations and
tasks are intended to promote recycling and
source reduction, provide for increased fed-
eral procurement of secondary materials,
make landfills and incinerators safer, sup-
port national research efforts in waste man-
agement, and facilitate state and local plan-
soon as possible. EPA offers technical
and financial support through state and
local governments to encourage the in-
volvement of small and medium-sized
companies in this program. Contact:
Lynn Apel (513) 569-7548.
•	Waste Reduction Assessments Program
(WRAP) — EPA encourages waste gen-
erators to use waste minimization assess-
ments to identify opportunities to reduce
waste. ORD has developed the EPA
Manual for Waste Minimization Opportu-
nity Assessments to help industries assess
the economic advisability of waste mini-
mization options. The manual is being
tested by the State of New Jersey at 30 fa-
cilities and will be revised based on com-
ments and experience gained in the field.
(See below for ordering information.)
Contact: Mary Ann Curran (513) 569-
7837.
•	Waste Reduction Evaluations at Federal
Sites (WREAFS) — Focusing on waste
minimization at federal sites, this pro-
gram includes demonstration and evalu-
ation projects for waste reduction con-
EPA Pilot Tests New E-Board
ning.
The strategy is available through the
RCRA Hotline at 1-800-424-9346 (or 382-
3000 in Washington, D.C.). Further infor-
mation is available from EPA's Municipal
Solid Waste Task Force, (202) 382-6261.
ORD Waste
Minimization Programs
EPA's Office of Research and Develop-
ment (ORD) inCincinnaticreatedits Waste
Minimization Branch to develop, demon-
strate, and encourage the adoption of tech-
nologies that will reduce waste generation.
Under the leadership of Harry Freeman,
Chief of the Waste Minimization Branch, a
number of programs have been initiated,
including:
• Waste Reduction Innovative Technol-
ogy Evaluation (WRITE) — This pro-
gram involves industry evaluations of
new and promising waste reduction tech-
nologies, in order to introduce viable
technologies into commercial practice as
EPA is pilot testing an electronic bulle-
tin board (E-Board) that offers access to a
comprehensive information network on
waste minimization and recycling. The E-
Board should be useful to industry, states,
public interest groups, and federal agency
staff in obtaining immediate, up-to-date
information on pollution prevention tech-
nologies and activities.
The bulletin board has six major compo-
nents at present: (1) a message center for
participants; (2) a calendar of events and
activities related to waste minimization; (3)
a summary of state waste minimization pro-
grams (relevant legislation, sources of fun-
ding, significant activities, and contact per-
sons); (4) a summary of other waste minimi-
zation programs in the federal government,
industry, and interest groups; (5) detailed
case studies of waste minimization; and (6)
list of publications and abstracts relating to
ducted cooperatively by EPA and offices
within the Department of Defense, De-
partment of Energy, and other federal
agencies. Contact: Jim Bridges (513)
569-7683.
• Waste Reduction Institute for Scientists
and Engineers (WRISE) — A joint pro-
ject of EPA and the University of Cin-
cinnati, the WRISE program will con-
vene a panel of experts in waste minimi-
zation who will be available for lectures,
seminars, and discussions with senior ex-
ecutives of private industry. Contact:
Dr. Thomas Hauser at the University of
Cincinnati, (513) 556-3693.
For further information about these and
other ORD programs in waste minimiza-
tion, or for a free copy of the EPA Manual for
Waste Minimization Opportunity Assessments
(EPA/625/7-88/003), write:
Waste Minimization Branch
Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
26 W. Martin Luther King Drive
Cincinnati, OH 45268
waste minimization, including order forms
for free publications.
The E-Board is accessible to anyone with
an IBM-compatible PC via equipped with a
telephone modem (2400 baud or less) and a
standard communications package similar
to Crosstalk XVI. The telephone number
and communications parameters for the
Waste Minimization E-Board are:
(301)589-8366
Data Bits=8
Stop Bits=l
Duplex=Full
Emulation=ANSl
The E-Board is scheduled to be opera-
tional by the Spring of this year. Future
issues of this newsletter will provide more
details on its features. For further informa-
tion, call Myles Morse at (202) 382-4664.
For technical inquiries, call Christopher
Messnerat (703 ) 821-4808.

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January 1989
3 - Pollution Prevention News
Interview with Jerry Kotas
Director of EPA's Pollution Prevention Office
PPN: What do you see as the role and
primary purpose of the Pollution Preven-
tion Office?
JK: I see this office serving as a catalyst
for pollution prevention activities, both
within EPA and outside the Agency.
There are so many people and organiza-
tions already doing excellent work in
this area. We intend to lend our support
and voice to promote pollution preven-
tion as the environmental approach of
the 1990s, and to get this message out to
all sectors of society.
PPN: Howwillyourapproachdifferfrom
the Agency's activities in other areas?
JK: At this point, we are not contem-
plating writing regulations. Instead, we
will be relying on persuasion and educa-
tion to achieve results. This will hope-
fully put us in a cooperative mode rather
than an adversarial role vis-a-vis indus-
try and other players, so that we can
work as a team to prevent pollution and
reduce waste.
PPN: What types of pollution are in-
cluded in your mandate?
JK: All types of pollution! Air emis-
sions, water pollutants, solid and haz-
ardous waste, you name it! The point is,
when it comes to prevention, we can no
longer afford to divide up the environ-
ment into separate pieces and look at
only one or two environmental media.
We especially need to avoid the so-
called environmental "merry-go-round"
effect where regulation in one medium
may encourage people to shift pollu-
tants to another medium without re-
ducing total loadings on the environ-
ment.
PPN: What specific achievements do you
hope to accomplish over the next year or
two?
JK: One of our first products will be an
Agency-wide strategy for preventing
pollution that will provide a national
direction as well as specific short-term
and long-term goals to be achieved.
That should come out in the Spring.
We are planning an aggressive outreach
effort, which will include person-to-
person contacts with a wide range of
companies and organizations, liaison
with the educational community to in-
fluence engineering and management
school curricula, and a national techni-
cal information clearinghouse.
We will also be using state grants
and other mechanisms to foster state
and local pollution prevention programs,
and we will be working actively with all
of EPA's program and regional offices to
establish pollution prevention as a cor-
nerstone of the environmental approach
of this Agency. In short, in the next two
years we will be laying the groundwork
for an effective and sustained pollution
prevention effort for the next decade.
PPN: What role will the EPA regional
offices and the states play in this process?
JK: We will rely heavily on the states
and EPA regions to represent the front
line in this effort. Because they are
closer to the industries and municipali-
ties that are directly involved in pollu-
tion prevention decisions, the states
and regions can be extremely effective
in providing technical and financial as-
sistance, identifying opportunities, and
promoting prevention efforts.
PPN: Do you think that significant prog-
ress can be made in pollution prevention
without prescriptive regulations or uniform
waste reduction standards?
JK: Only time will tell, but for now we
see the potential for enormous progress
by working cooperatively with industry,
public interest groups, municipalities,
consumers, and other government offi-
cials. The job of preventing pollution
cannot rest solely with EPA or with
government in general. We don't plan
to dictate how each factory should
Jerry Kotas was named the Director of EPA's
new Pollution Prevention Office in August
1988. He formerly served as the Director of
EPA's National Pesticide Survey, a joint proj-
ect of the Office of Drinking Water and Office
of Pesticide Programs. His prior experience at
EPA includes three years in hazardous waste
enforcement and four years in water pollution
control, developing regulations for the Under-
ground Injection Control program and encour-
aging state ground-water protection efforts.
Before coming to Washington, Kotas worked
on environmental problems at the state level in
Ohio and Texas. At the Great Lakes Basin
Commission he served as liaison with eight
statesand 11 federal agencies. Ahydrogeologist
by training, he has degrees from Notre Dame
and the University of Texas at Austin.
operate its production processes, or to
force consumers to use paper bags at the
supermarket instead of plastic. Instead,
our role is to encourage all sectors of so-
ciety to take a close hard look at how our
choices are affecting the environment,
and to consider ways in which we can
create fewer pollutants.
This may require a fairly large "cul-
tural change" in order to help people
change their attitudes and behavior.
But I am confident that when people
hear the message and understand the
urgency of preventing pollution and re-
ducing waste, they will join us in pro-
moting this effort.

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Pollution Prevention News - 4
January 1989
Waste Minimization
Workshops
To train state inspectors and industry
representatives to identify waste minimiza-
tion opportunities, EPA has developed a
series of workshop programs targeted to
specific industries. The workshops will
promote waste minimization through audi-
ting and process analysis procedures.
The workshops will apply the audit pro-
cedures given in the EPA Manual for Waste
Minimization Opportunity Assessments to in-
dustrial situations. Sessions will examine
actual cases presented by participants and
hypothetical cases developed by instructors.
In addition, the workshops will provide
instruction in conducting cost/benefit analy-
ses, addressing management concerns, iden-
tifying incentives for waste minimization
within a specific plant, and pursuing inno-
vative minimization strategies. Participants
will also be taught computer skills to help
them solve problems out of class.
The workshops are scheduled to begin in
early 1989 at locations across the country.
For general and technical information,
contact Doug Williams of EPA/ORD in
Cincinnati at (513) 569-7361. For registra-
tion information, contact Peer Consultants
in Dayton, OH at (513) 252-1222.
Editor's Comer
(from page 1)
and that we at EPA need to get up to speed
in a hurry.
At the same time, numerous conversa-
tions over the past few months have stressed
time and againhow much further we need to
go as a society to prevent pollution. We
need to get the word out to a greater cross-
section of people that prevention makes
both good business sense and good environ-
mental sense. We need to think in terms of
the environment as a whole, not strictly in
terms of impacts on individual environ-
mental media (air, water, land).
Over time, we believe that a cross- media,
preventive outlook will become a standard
part of EPA's mode of operations as well.
The Pollution Prevention Office at EPA
will be taking a lead role in coordinating
prevention programs within EPA, working
with EPA's program and regional offices to
bring pollution prevention efforts to the
forefront of the Agency's activities.
We intend to build on the accomplish-
ments that have already begun. This first
issue of Pollution Prevention News reports
on efforts underway in the Municipal Solid
Waste program of the Office of Solid Waste
and on several initiatives from the Office of
Research and Development. The Office of
Solid Waste's Waste Minimization Branch
has contributed several articles to this news-
letter on some exciting events including the
establishment of a new electronic bulletin
board on waste minimization. We look
forward to reporting on other important
prevention-related activities around the
Agency infuture issues of Pollution Preven-
tion News.
Meanwhile, let's hear from you! We are
interested in your views on this newsletter,
and on a whole range of topics — new
pollution prevention initiatives, promising
technologies, useful workshops, and EPA's
role in furthering the cause of pollution pre-
vention. Send your articles and letters to:
Pollution Prevention Office (PM-219),U.S.
EPA, 401 M Street SW, Washington, D.C.
20460.
John Atcheson
Workshop Schedule
11
•,C"Xv& H
LOCATION
Houston, TX
Chicago, IL
Seattle, WA
Atlanta, GA
Baltimore, MD
DATES
Feb. 28 - Mar. 1,1989
April 18-19,1989
May 2-3,1989
May 9-10,1989
May 31 - June 1,1989
INDUSTRY
Electronics and plastics manufacturing, petroleum refining
Chemical and electronics manufacturing, metal finishing
Wood preserving, metal finishing, electronics manufacturing
Chemical manufacturing, wood preserving, textiles finishing, carpet manufacturing
Petroleum refining, plastics manufacturing, textiles finishii>g, carpet manufacturing
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