onslaught is to not make so much of it. This resistance approach (precycling)
can be induced (taxed against and rebated for) in manufacturing plants
through the minimizing of both product and packaging, and by giving a ‘soci-
etal seal of approval’ to the manufacturing of recyclable and biodegradable
products which use the ‘cleanest available technology’.
- The second principle implicates manufacturers in producing consumer
durables which are long-lasting, and energy efficient, to which there arises a
concomitance: the attainment and endorsement of an energy-efficient and low-
maintenance longer life-cycle for consumer durables.
•Athirdprinciple involves finding a way to recover and reuse waste products: thus
paper discards may be reprocessed into the likes of egg-crates, and organic
matter made into compost. It also involves the practice of ‘waste forward
exchange’ involving the passing on (usually the on-sale) of waste from one
source (baling station, industrial plant) as the input to another plant’s product.
Recovery and reuse also involves the engagement of ‘takeback’ policies and
rules for the likes of containers, packaging, and outworn consumables, includ-
ing the obvious reutilization of returnable bottles, reusable crates and packs,
and burning combustible waste for the likes of district heating.
•Afourthprinciple involves the capture of all hazardous and
toxic waste for scientific neutralizing, involving some possi-
bilities for recycling, others for incineration and others for
incarceration. The imperative in regard to hazardous
and toxic wastes is to maintain a continuous ‘audit’ in
recognition of the understanding that evidence of a lack of
assimilability in nature calls for capture and diversion. The
most important curtailment relates to radioactive wastes, toxic chemicals
embodied in consumer durables, and certain fungicides, herbicides pesticides,
and other other ‘conveyor’ products which are non-degradable (like CFCs)
which disperse into, yet are not amenable to being recycled within, the land-
scapes waterways or the atmosphere. - The fifth principle involves the practice of environmentally benign safe
disposal for solid, water-borne and gaseous terminal residues and all other unusable
trash.
This ‘clever’ approach – much dumping practice is not even ‘smart’, being in fact
often ‘dumb’ – involves a mixture of desirable and imperative practices appro-
priate to modern hedonistic society. Better to promote a mixture of policies (reduc-
tion, reuse, recycle) on a rewarding ‘incentive basis’, and to enforce other policies
for hazardous waste capture and recovery on a punitive ‘disincentive’ penalty
basis. These approaches are the cornerstones to the five policy points which Bailey
(1991) itemizes for the attainment of waste reduction and hazardous waste man-
agement: information, incentives, research and development, along with behav-
iour, correction, and controls. Important in every waste disposal management
programme is the need to link waste management with a performance-auditing
of fossil-fuel conservation and an overall fossil energy use curtailment, regulated
by both policy and taxes
Growth Pattern Management 185
Resist
Recover
Recycle
Reuse
Reduce
Re-educate
Rehabilitate