President's Message
The California Waste Association (CWA) welcomes you and offers an interactive network of professionals who seek to understand how to comply with regulations, to keep apprised of new legislation, and to communicate well with regulators. The new normal is a heightened sense of industrial responsibility to reduce environmental liability, to reduce cost, and to manage public relations. The CWA provides its attendees with knowledge about environmental regulations, with the intricacies of being ethical, and a forum to exchange ideas.
The CWA is promoting sustainable ideas such as waste minimization, recycling, reuse, restoration, reduction of hazardous material use, and ways to avoid generating waste. In fact, there is a paradigm shift in the whole thought process where ideas that have been discussed for a decade are now the current wave of practices. The standard practices today are to use materials more efficiently. The CWA has been at the forefront of this paradigm shift to impact the environment less. The CWA is contemplating an image change, just as it did fifteen years ago when it changed from a focus on hazardous waste to a focus on all types of waste. Now it is considering changing its focus from waste all together. The CWA is running a contest to reward $100 to the person who suggests a new name that CWA agrees to change to.
Aside from CWA’s primary emphasis on issues and resources for sustainability, the CWA examines a broad scope of best management practices. A state wide series of workshops were coordinated in cooperation with DTSC by CWA for SB-14. We do not forget the basics of inspecting hazardous waste storage areas for emergency response equipment, closed containers, and the proper markings showing the date of generation and a description of the contents. We cover waste characterization with the intricacies of lab analyses, filling out the proper shipping papers, and preparing containers for shipping with the proper label and markings. Non-hazardous waste management, storm water, industrial waste water, groundwater, spill prevention control counter measure programs, storage tank programs, and the fate of hazardous materials are all examined.
The CWA will continue to be a conduit to educate generators, consultants, transporters, and Treatment Storage Disposal Facilities (TSDFs). The CWA monitors topics on improved lab methods and instruments where lower the detection limits are possible, as well as green projects including groundwater remediation, sewage treatment improvements, energy production from waste, and innovative green chemistry approaches. We will stay apprised about the evaluation of the fate of chemicals used in common consumer products as well as methods to quantify CO2 emissions or equivalents.
Where possible, the CWA seeks to promote technical developments to improve environmental safety. The CWA promotes an exchange of ideas about how to sustain the economy and the environment. There is more emphasis on making safe products out of waste and on making products that have a circle of chemical life.
The CWA looks forward to your participation.
Dale W. Botts
CWA President