Allen D

Vol. 2,  No. 2, pp. 51-59, Dec.  1996

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Billions of tons of industrial waste are generated annually in industrialized countries. Managing and legally disposing of these wastes costs tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and these costs have been increasing rapidly. The escalation is likely to continue as emission standards become even more stringent around the world. In the face of these rapidly rising costs and rapidly increasing performance standards, traditional end-of-pipe approaches to waste management have become less attractive. The most economical waste management alternatives in many cases have become recycling of the waste or the redesign of chemical processes and products so that wastes are prevented or put to productive use. These strategies of recycling or reducing waste at the source have collectively come to be known as pollution prevention. The engineering challenges associated with pollution prevention are substantial. This presentation will categorize the challenges in three levels. At the most macroscopic level, the flow of materials in our industrial economy, from natural resource extraction to consumer product disposal, can be redesigned. Currently, most of our raw materials are virgin natural resources that are used once, then discarded.