So they started thinking about how to prevent pollution. Now they have become experts in the subject, showing others how to get off the toxic treadmill. As this new report shows, local government agencies use toxics just the way private firms do. Many local governments and private firms maintain inventories, at any given moment, of roughly 300 pounds of toxic materials per employee. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Local governments can become leaders in reducing the use of toxic materials.
This is important, because a government that is addicted to toxics isn' t in a very strong moral position to urge a private firm to clean up its act. We need farther-reaching solutions that reduce society's dependence on toxic chemicals. Because toxic materials generate pollution and hazards at every stage of their life-cycle manufacturing, transportation, incorporation into a product, use of the product and final disposal we have come to believe that the best solution to the problem of toxic pollution is preventing the pollution in the first place. Eliminating a toxic material eliminates its problems at every stage. Toxics hit list Remarkably, even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has never developed an official prioritized list that tells people which toxic materials they might want to eliminate first.