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Source reduction:
as applied by Texas law, means reducing the amount of any hazardous or nonhazardous substance entering any waste stream or released into the environment prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal.
Waste minimization:
a practice that reduces the environmental or health hazards associated with hazardous wastes, pollutants, or contaminants; examples may include reuse, recycling, neutralization, and detoxification.
Source separation:
a process that keeps hazardous waste from nonhazardous waste, preventing all the waste from being managed as hazardous waste; it does not necessarily reduce the total volume of waste, only its hazardous components.
Recycling and reuse:
the process of removing a substance from a waste and returning it to productive use. Recycling can take place at a plant, where the waste is reused within the production process itself. Waste can also be recovered off site. A third form of recycling is to send the waste to another industry through an interindustry exchange. Used solvents, zinc, and other metals and acids are commonly recycled.
Substitution of raw materials:
a process that replaces a raw material that results in hazardous waste with one that results in less hazardous wastes or none at all.
Manufacturing process changes:
a method that consists of either eliminating a process that produces waste or changing the process so that a waste is no longer produced.
Substitution of products:
eliminating the use of a hazardous material; for example, by substituting creosote-preserved wood posts with concrete posts, no hazardous wastes will leach from the posts.
(Source: EPA, Solving the Hazardous Waste Problem: EPA's RCRA Program [November 1986], 19; Texas Water
Commission, Case Studies of Source Reduction & Waste Minimization by Texas Industries [March 1992].)
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