New Approach to Toxics

The best way to avoid toxic waste is to make fewer toxics in the first place. If more time were spent figuring out how to do with less, less time would be wasted searching for dump sites to dispose of waste. The California Senate Toxics Committee takes up a measure today that makes a good start in this direction.

The bill, SB 2767, sponsored by Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland), would make it worth their while, through tax incentives and financial help, for manufacturers to list toxics they now use and then figure out how to get by with less.

Key elements in the program are the toxics-use reduction plans, which companies must complete within four years after the bill becomes law. Companies themselves, not the government, would draft the plans. As one manufacturer said, “Waste reduction is very specific to what you’re doing.”

Taking stock of toxics can pay off. Borden Chemical Co. in Fremont makes resins for plywood and particle board. The manufacturing process creates phenol, which can cause severe burns when heavily concentrated, and formaldehyde, which has a strong, disagreeable odor and is a suspected carcinogen in rats. Those toxic substances were contained in water left over after manufacturing. Frank Tejera, the Borden plant manager, said his company found it could recycle much of that water, meaning there was less water and therefore fewer toxic substances to dump.The plant reduced toxic-waste discharge by about 93%.

Tejera added that about three-fourths of the initial reduction in toxic wastes was done fairly inexpensively. The greater degree of reduction you seek, the more it costs, he said. He added that recycling and reduced hauling costs have probably saved the company several hundred thousand dollars since it made these changes.

Petris wants to coordinate the efforts to reduce toxics in a new government department, and that raises red flags. The efforts need to be coordinated, to be sure, but the bill can sink itself if its advocates insist on a separate department with all the attendant personnel and paper work for manufacturers.

The concept of this bill is critically important. Reducing the use of toxic chemicals should help cut pollution, protect people’s health and ease political pressures that surround the waste-disposal issue. SB 2767 offers the Legislature the chance to start that planning process.