Environmental responsibility shown
by partnership
Sixty-one organizations have contributed significant
efforts in reducing and recycling materials, and reducing or eliminating
priority chemicals in products and waste, including lead, mercury
and cadmium.
The organizations, including utilities, schools,
electronic and chemical companies, and consumer product manufacturers,
among others, are members of the United States Environmental Protection
Agency’s (EPA) National Partnership for Environmental Priorities
or WasteWise programs.
EPA gave awards to 25 National Partnership for
Environmental Priorities (NPEP) members for reducing or removing
significant priority chemicals. The partners’ combined efforts
reduced or eliminated 144 pounds of dioxin, 4,335 pounds of PCBs,
26,750 pounds of mercury, and more than 1 million pounds of lead.
Partners reduced or removed lead in automotive
components, glass tubing, fluorescent lights, filters, wire, and
cable products, automotive lighting, printing plates and cylinders,
PVC compounds, and cathode ray tubes. One NPEP partner recycled
66,000 mercury-containing bulbs.
EPA gave awards to 36 WasteWise partners who eliminated
nearly 16 million tons of materials this year. By decreasing the
demand on raw materials through waste reduction, WasteWise partners
are also reducing their impact on global climate change. Several
partners are reusing items that would have otherwise been thrown
out, including lab equipment, clothing, and boiler ash. Others have
initiated programs that increased recycling awareness, letting people
know that recycling goes beyond newspapers and aluminum cans. In
some cases, WasteWise partners totally altered their production
processes to substitute recovered materials or reduced the amount
of raw materials they used in their products.
NPEP is a partnership of public and private organizations
that reduce or remove the use of priority chemicals in products
and waste. By 2011, NPEP aims to reduce or eliminate 4 million pounds
of priority chemicals.
Since its inception, WasteWise partners have eliminated
120 million tons of material. This year alone, WasteWise partners’
waste reduction efforts reduced emissions equivalent to the emissions
from using over 62 million barrels of crude oil. |
