Understanding the EPA Guide for Industrial Waste Management

Through the Guide for Industrial Waste Management, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides guidance for facility managers, state and tribal regulators, the public, and others with recommendations and tools to better address the management of land-disposed, non-hazardous industrial waste.

The EPA defines non-hazardous industrial waste as “waste generated from processes associated with the production of goods and products, such as electric power generation and manufacturing of materials such as pulp and paper, iron and steel, glass, and concrete.” The EPA also proposes laws and regulations regarding industrial waste that stress the proper disposal of industrial waste.

What is the Purpose of the Industrial Waste Management Guide?

The EPA’s Guide for Industrial Waste Management provides informative tools and resources to help manage the non-hazardous industrial waste that is disposed of in your state, at your company, or in your community. The guide provides several tools to understand and assess risks potentially posed by industrial waste.

The information in the Guide allows facility managers to make environmentally responsible decisions while working in partnership with local regulatory agencies and the public at large. It can serve as a handy implementation reference tool for regulators to complement existing programs and help address any gaps. The Guide can also help the public become more informed and more knowledgeable in addressing waste management issues in the community.

What’s Inside the Guide for Industrial Waste Management?

The Guide for Industrial Waste Management includes:

• Considerations for siting industrial waste management units.
• Methods for characterizing waste constituents.
• Tools to assess risks that might be posed by the waste.
• Fact sheets and online resources such as websites with industrial waste management information about individual waste constituents.

The Guide delineates the primary principles for building waste management stakeholder partnerships, opportunities for waste minimization, guidelines for safe unit design, procedures for monitoring surface water, air, and groundwater, and recommendations for closure and post-closure care.

What Are the Principles of the Guide?

There are four underlying principles that inform the Guide for Industrial Waste Management.

1. Protecting human health and the ecological environment.
   The most immediate and important purpose of the Guide is to promote sound waste management that protects human health and the environment. Using a multimedia approach that emphasizes surface water, groundwater, and air protection, the Guide presents a comprehensive framework of technologies and practices that make up an effective waste management system.
2. Providing appropriate guidelines that tailor management practices to risks.
   There is enormous diversity in the type and nature of industrial waste and the environmental settings in which it is managed. The Guide provides conservative management recommendations and simple-to-use modeling tools to tailor management practices to waste- and location-specific risks. It also identifies in-depth analytic tools to conduct more comprehensive site-specific analyses.
3. Providing appropriate guidelines for program implementation.
   States, counties, and local governments bear responsibility for adopting and implementing programs to ensure proper management of industrial waste. The Guide can help both large and small communities implement these programs. Individual states or municipalities might have more stringent or extensive regulatory requirements based on local or regional conditions or policy considerations. The Guide complements, but does not supersede, these regulatory programs; it can help community leaders make decisions on meeting applicable regulatory requirements and filling potential gaps. Facility managers and the public should consult with the appropriate regulatory agency throughout the process to understand regulatory requirements and how to use the Guide.
4. Fostering working partnerships among stakeholders.
   The public, facility managers, and state and local governments often share a common interest in preserving quality neighborhoods, protecting the environment and public health, and enhancing the economic well-being of the community. The Guide can provide a common technical framework to facilitate discussion and help stakeholders work together to achieve meaningful environmental results.

Integrating the KenBay RotoPac with the EPA Guide

KenBay adds enormous value to your company’s implementation of the EPA Guide for Industrial Waste Management. The KenBay Rotopac Rotary Compactor reduces the amount of your company’s industrial waste by tightly compacting it into 4’ cubed bags, which enables haulers to maximize the space needed to truck it to recycling centers, Waste To Energy (WtE) facilities, or the incinerator. These stackable bags are superior to transporting roll-offs and receiver cans containing considerable air. This allows facility managers to make environmentally responsible decisions while working in partnership with local regulatory agencies and the public at large to reduce the size of their industrial waste footprint.

6 Reasons to Try the KenBay RotoPac

1. Drastically reduces the expense of transporting waste to recycling centers and WtE facilities.
2. The small 4’ x 5’ footprint allows for strategic placement, which means less handling.
3. The high compaction rate of 6:1 means you can ship more waste, not air.
4. When you minimize the handling of waste materials, you also improve safety compliance.
5. KenBay is the only U.S. supplier of rotary continuous compaction machines like the RotoPac.
6. You can go biodegradable – with the RotoPac, biodegradable waste bags are available.