ENVIRONMENTAL-POLICY AND THE REDUCTION OF HAZARDOUS-WASTE

Environmental policy encouraging hazardous waste reduction began in 19 76 with an Environmental Protection Agency statement promoting source reduction as the preferred method of hazardous waste management. In 19 84, Congress included a policy statement supporting waste reduction in the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA). However, the corners tone of HSWA was the land disposal restrictions (LDRs)-a command and c ontrol policy prohibiting land disposal of untreated hazardous waste. Consideration of the hazardous waste generation decision in the aggreg ate would suggest that the price effect resulting from the LDR program and increased hazardous waste management prices in general would lead to source reduction. Although at the firm level there may be interdic ting factors, statistical analysis of generation data for Tennessee su pport this hypothesis. Both the institution of the LDRs and waste mana gement prices have significant negative effects on the level of genera tion. The analysis however, reveals the existence of large industry an d firm effects, indicating that the response to public policy may exhi bit significant variance, especially at the individual generator level .