part of its Responsible Care Initiative. Moreover, 95 percent of the CMA member companies who were asked to do so by EPA-and that includes Monsanto-have committed to voluntarily reduce emissions of 17 targeted chemicals by 1995 as a part of the agency's so-called 33/50 project.

Pollution prevention that is, reducing releases to the environment via source reduction, recycling, and treatment, in that order of preference, is a positive initiative which we all support, and an unprecedented voluntary effort is under way to implement that initiative.

We read in the language of title II, however-and staff has confirmed an intent to focus on reduction or elimination of targeted chemicals without regard to pollution prevention. We believe that this expansion is over-reaching and will complicate consideration of the overall RCRA reauthorization bill and may undermine the important voluntary pollution prevention efforts which are under way across the Nation.

Mr. Chairman, we are concerned that title II of S. 976 is burdened with provisions that would imply a national agenda to undertake a blind reduction or elimination effort aimed at thousands of chemicals in hundreds of thousands of applications without regard for risk to human health and the environment, without regard to the other regulatory programs which are in place and intended to regulate those chemicals in commerce, and finally, without regard to the benefits derived from the use of the resulting products.

We believe that chemicals can be managed safely, and we are committed to this. They play a vital role in the U.S. and the world economy, and restricting their use should be a carefully considered process such as is provided under the Toxic Substances Control Act. We would urge, then, that the subcommittee refocus the policy goals and scope of title II on pollution prevention.

Secondly, I mentioned the issue of whether mandatory and enforceable planning provisions will really result in more pollution prevention. Independent of the issue of toxics use reduction versus pollution prevention, we are concerned that the incentives provided by title II, as many interpret the bill's language and intent, would result in setting goals one is absolutely sure can be met, in that to set a stretch goal which might not be achieved would trigger the audit-mandated goals and enforcement provisions.

If, instead, initiatives were provided to meet stretch goals, if resources were provided to assist small business and to foster prevention in the regulatory process, and creative flexibility were provided to overcome permitting barriers to prevention, more reduction would result.

Mr. Chairman, we support pollution prevention, we support planning to achieve pollution prevention, and we support government encouragement of voluntarism in this area. We are concerned about the impact of expansion to toxics use reduction and an excessive and potentially chilling focus on enforcement.

Let me now yield to Mr. Jamro, who will comment on the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act and how it relates to the subject at hand.

Senator BAUCus. I am sorry, but the time has expired. We will get into that in the questions.

Senator BAUCUS. Next on the list I have Mr. Muir.

STATEMENT OF WARREN R. MUIR, SENIOR FELLOW, INFORM, AND PRESIDENT, HAMPSHIRE RESEARCH

Mr. MUIR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am a chemist and public health scientist, and today I am representing INFORM, a nonprofit environmental research organization, which has been involved in looking at industrial source reduction for in excess of 9 years now.

One of the products of INFORM's research in 1985 was the publication of Cutting Chemical Wastes, which, if the committee is not otherwise familiar, I would be happy to leave a copy of.

It is a case study of 29 organic chemical plants in Ohio, New Jersey, and California, and documents what the companies were and were not doing with respect to source reduction and attempting to try to understand what the factors were influencing the extent of that.

I will speak very briefly to those results but also to results which INFORM has been involved in since that research and, in particular, an update to this study which has looked at what has occurred 5 years since that time.

Most importantly, I will share with you the findings that there really is a rather enormous potential for source reduction in industry, and we are convinced that the findings that we have for the organic chemical industry apply equally to many other sectors of our economy as well.

There are very large, as yet untapped opportunities for source reduction, an approach that everybody agrees is an environmentally preferred approach to various waste management and pollution control and end-of-the-pipe approaches, and one which has considerable potential for large cost savings to companies, ones that are perhaps larger and perhaps can occur faster than we had previously imagined.

Just to share with you some of the results that we had, we had, I believe, documented 146 examples of source reduction in our 1990 update of Cutting Chemical Wastes, which will be out in a few months.

Senator BAUCUS. When you say source reductions, what do you mean?

Mr. MUIR. I am talking about actions companies take to avoid generating any waste that needs to be managed, that no longer needs to be treated or-I am dealing with outputs of process. I am talking about that aspect of things, actions the companies can take to become more efficient and put more of what they are dealing with into their product, as opposed to into waste.

Senator BAUCUS. Go ahead.

Mr. MUIR. We documented at these plants some 146 different actions, and the companies shared with us quite a bit of information. Some of the types of figures we got: An average reduction in the chemical constituent of concern of some 68 percent per action; an average percent increase in product yields of 6.8 percent; an aver

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age quantity reduced per action of some 2.4 million pounds per year; average cost savings of $484,000 per year for such actions; an average return on investment of a year; and an average R&D time, from the time they have identified a particular source and concluded that it needed to be addressed to implementation, of approximately 8 months.

Quite frankly, I cannot think of another alternative that is available to industry which can get that type of return on investment, and here we are talking about an approach which all would agree is an environmentally desirable one.

Another noteworthy conclusion is that the factors influencing the extent of source reduction in these companies are not largely encumbered by regulation, not by technology, and not by dollars. They are largely institutional factors, which means that there is a real opportunity to wake companies up to their own self-interest, and companies have it within their own wherewithal to move quickly in this particular arena.

Our view with respect to legislation, therefore, is that the government ought to try to seek a role where it can help companies wake up to their own self-interests but not get in the way of such actions.

I think the Federal Pollution Prevention Act, which Congress enacted last fall, is a major step forward, and it is only beginning implementation. I note that you incorporated that in your act.

In sum, approaches that we think are likely to work, information is a key one. I think the planning and auditing is an approach which States are taking. I think there are some real opportunities there, but largely prescriptive approaches, I believe, are going to be counterproductive except in those cases where we need to force innovation and make available non-toxic products.

Senator BAUCUS. Thank you very much, sir.

Next, William Ryan.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM RYAN, POLICY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER

Mr. RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Bill Ryan. I am the policy director for the National Environmental Law Center, which is based in Boston and was established a year ago to bring lawsuits against polluters and to develop innovative pollution prevention strategies.

For the last 8 years or so, I have been involved in a number of States in the development and passage of toxics use reduction legislation: in Massachusetts; in Oregon; recently in Vermont; in Connecticut, where a modest piece of legislation was just passed; and also in California, where a modest piece of legislation was passed last year and additional legislation is pending.

I also participated in EPA's Science Advisory Board's recent panel that produced the report, Reducing Risk; I helped draft the pollution prevention sections of that report.

There are a couple of points that I wanted to touch on this morning. One is this difference between toxics use reduction and source reduction that we have been talking about. There is a lot of confusion about the terms.

Let's start with the term pollution prevention. Basically, it means changing production processes and products so that you produce less waste, or so that you use fewer toxic chemicals. The key is that you are changing your production processes or your products, as opposed to adding a different technology to treat the waste that is coming off your process, which would be pollution control.

Source reduction, then is a pollution prevention approach that is oriented towards improving the efficiency of your production processes so you produce less waste, much as Senator Chafee suggested. Toxics use reduction promotes changes in production processes and products, but with a different focus. It has a very clear goalto reduce the use of toxic chemicals in the first place. So you are using the same techniques, but you have a different goal; you have a different objective that you have set out.

Let me use the case of meta sodium, which was just spilled in California, as an example. If we focused on source reduction of meta sodium-although pesticide use in the agricultural area is slightly different than what we are talking about today-we would not try to waste the chemical as it is applied to crops. We would try to use it more efficiently.

With toxics use reduction, the idea would be to try to find alternatives to meta sodium, to avoid all of the problems associated with the use of the chemical, from transportation accidents, to worker exposure during application, to residues on food crops and the exposures that occur there.

So toxics use reduction is a more fundamental and comprehensive approach, which is particularly appropriate to be practiced by industries which are users of toxic chemicals. It may not be as appropriate for the chemical industry, whose basic products are to produce these chemicals. It is a more fundamental, comprehensive, and multi-problem approach than source reductions. The Science Advisory Board in their Reducing Risk report suggested that we should go beyond specific single problem pollution prevention approaches like waste reduction, to toxics use and other multi-problem solutions wherever possible.

So that is the fundamental distinction between source reduction and toxics use reductions. You do not have to adopt a regulatory approach in encouraging either one.

Now, the second area that I wanted to touch on briefly is an area that is not adequately addressed in the legislation that is currently pending. That is the area of public reporting on toxics use, both at a facility-wide level and a production process level, whichcan play a key role in actually motivating people to do toxics use reduction. In the Massachusetts law, for example, just to slightly correct Ms. Kelley from before, public reporting on toxic use is required for your facility as a whole-you must report your use of a chemical, what is going into your product and what is coming off as waste. For each production process, you also must report what is coming off as waste and your emissions per unit of product made.

In the new New Jersey law-that is about to be signed into law-you also for each production process must report the amount of each toxic chemical that you use per unit of product made. The production process level information is really important because

that is the only way you are really going to track accurately whether you are getting changes in use over time and what kinds of changes are going on within facilities. That level of reporting is key.

The TRI data has been a major force driving companies towards reducing their releases of chemicals. Collecting information on toxics use can be a major force driving people to reduce their use of toxic chemicals.

The third point that I want to touch on briefly is the use of mandatory techniques such as standards or chemical phase-outs and bans to promote toxics use reduction. For the first several years of this type of program, it is premature to apply these types of approaches, because there is just not enough information developed yet. It is a new field. We are still getting into it. But as time goes on, you are going to begin to have leaders in the field and laggards in the field, and at that point it will be appropriate for EPA to have the power to provide guidance to move the laggards up to where the leaders are.

Senator Lieberman's bill provides a framework for EPA to be able to provide such guidance. We would like to see that type of approach incorporated into law so that, 5 years down the road, we can push the laggards up to where the leaders are. EPA could set performance standards that allow companies to figure out how to meet the standards, so as not to restrict the technologies they can use, but allow them the flexibility to be innovative.

The last point I wanted to make is that we would like to see, because we think it is extremely important, a provision for chemical sunsetting. There are going to be situations where chemical sunsetting will be the most direct way to reduce the use of a particular problematic toxic chemical.

Senator BAUCUs. Thank you very much.

There is a vote now, so I am going to have to recess for about 5 to 10 minutes. Senator Lieberman will return first, and he will resume as soon as he does return. So we are recessed for about 5 or 10 minutes.

Thank you.

[Recess.]

Senator LIEBERMAN [acting chair]. Thank you for your patience. Let's now reconvene the hearing. In Senator Baucus' absence, it will be my honor to preside. I gather that we are now up to Mr. Burt, and we look forward to hearing from you now.

Mr. Burt is the president of Acteron Metal Finishers from Redwood City, California. Thanks for being here.

STATEMENT OF PATRICK BURT, PRESIDENT, ACTERON METAL FINISHERS, AND CHAIRMAN OF WASTE MINIMIZATION, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF METAL FINISHERS

Mr. BURT. Thank you, Senator. I am Patrick Burt, president of Acteron Corporation, and I am here today as chairman of waste minimization for the National Association of Metal Finishers.

I will be discussing the title II toxic use reduction provisions of Senate bill 976. With me in the hearing is William Sonntag, director of governmental relations for our association.