Nearly everything we do leaves behind some kind of waste. Households create ordinary garbage. Industrial and manufacturing processes create solid and hazardous waste. The Office of Solid Waste (OSW) regulates all this waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

RCRA's goals are to:

• Protect us from the hazards of waste disposal
• Conserve energy and natural resources by recycling and recovery
• Reduce or eliminate waste, and
• Clean up waste, which may have spilled, leaked, or been improperly disposed.

Hazardous waste comes in many shapes and forms. Chemical, metal, and furniture manufacturing are some examples of processes that create hazardous waste. RCRA tightly regulates all hazardous waste from "cradle to grave." RCRA also controls garbage and industrial waste. Common garbage is municipal waste, which consists mainly of paper, yard trimmings, glass, and other materials. Industrial waste is process waste that comes from a broad range of operations. Some wastes are managed by other federal agencies or state laws. Examples of such wastes are animal waste, radioactive waste, and medical waste.

OSW accomplishes this through our mission:

We protect human health and the environment by ensuring responsible national management of hazardous and nonhazardous waste. Our goals are to:

• conserve resources by reducing waste;
• prevent future waste disposal problems by writing result-oriented regulations; and
• clean up areas where waste may have spilled, leaked, or been improperly disposed.
  Individual states adopt federal standards and operate their own waste management programs. Besides states, OSW works closely with industry, environmental groups, tribes, and the concerned public to promote safe waste management. These shared responsibilities help us to:
• set national environmental goals, policies, and priorities;
  assume leadership roles in environmental education; and
  write flexible, health-based regulations that reflect ecological risks and environmental justice.

We work to assure the safe management of nonhazardous household, industrial, and mining wastes. Because everyone shares responsibility for reducing and managing these wastes, OSW's policies rely heavily on national voluntary and educational programs. We promote and encourage the use of combined methods to manage solid waste. These methods are: source reduction or waste prevention, which means any practice that reduces the amount or toxicity of waste generated; recycling, which conserves disposal capacity and preserves natural resources by preventing potentially useful materials from being thrown away; and landfilling and waste combustion.