The role of waste management in the control of hazardous substances: lessons learned

Even if a dangerous substance has been banned, it is further used in a number of products. In the cases presented here, the substances were banned for further use. In the case of CFCs, the substitutes used have partially also been substituted because of adverse effects. Besides the prohibition of use of hazardous substances, numerous other regulations were issued to reduce unsafe handling and minimize emissions into the environment. It turned out that waste management cannot correct mistakes which already happened “upstream” in the product chain. The control of point sources works quite successfully, whereas today the overwhelming emissions stem from diffuse sources, partially caused by unsafe waste management procedures.Though there are no complete balances for both groups of compounds serving as examples, some conclusions can be drawn based on the experiences collected. Hazardous compounds may be separated successfully from used products or waste,？ If they are mostly used in industry and not in households,？ if they can be identified as part of certain products,？ if their concentration in these products is rather high,？ if technical problems come up when they contaminate secondary raw materials,？ if there is international support for proper waste management.Globalization of consumer products also means global application of chemicals used in these products and also global spread of these chemicals with waste, when the products come to their “end of life”. This is not a new experience. In the development of chemical industry, product lines like coal tar dyes were highly significant world wide just a hundred years ago (see for example [1]). In contrary to natural dyes, tar dyes could be standardized. At the beginning of the 20th century, the German and Swiss chemical industry supplied the whole world with brilliant and reproducible colours based on tar chemistry. Years later, toxic and environmentally hazardous properties of these compounds were discovered. Former ar