Summary: National policy now makes hazardous waste minimization, which seeks to avoid waste production in the first place, the preferred way of handling such material. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs valid data to measure how well U.S. industry prevents the generation of hazardous waste, as well as factors associated with successful waste production avoidance. GAO found that EPA's baseline hazardous waste minimization data are fraught with measurement problems, most of which are severe enough to greatly limit the data's usefulness in profiling the extent of waste minimization progress. These problems include ambiguities in definitions of key concepts, terms, and questions; governmental reporting requirements; and the relationship of production amounts and types to the volume of hazardous waste produced. These ambiguities cause reliability and validity problems for waste minimization program elements, waste stream information, and production mix data. The problems are so severe that the data cannot be adjusted to account for imperfect measurement; hence, waste minimization progress cannot be determined.
