Everything goes somewhere — garbage and sewage leach toxins into our lakes, rivers, and oceans.
Free Online Resources
A Report Card on Canada’s Sewage Treatment
For more information, see the Sewage Report Card, which you can download as a pdf from
www.sierralegal.org
Electronic Product Recovery Eco-Labels
For information on Nordic Swan, go to:
www.svanen.nu
For more on TCO Development, go to:
www.tcodevelopment.com
NATION
best practices for provincial and national governments
Some of the biggest impacts on reducing toxic pollution have come from citizen-led campaigns that have created environmental protection laws at the provincial and national levels of government around the world. Laws made at these levels can have far-reaching effects on the regulation of toxic chemicals.
One example is the historic 1986 ballot initiative in California (also known as Proposition 65) that led to the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. Under that legislation, any product that contains an ingredient that is listed by the state as a carcinogen or reproductive toxin must be labeled with a warning so that consumers can make informed choices. In the European Union, legislators recently passed one of the most advanced initiatives governing chemicals, called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals). It will re-evaluate all existing chemicals and requires that manufacturers of chemicals first submit an assessment of the health and environmental impact of a new chemical before it can be marketed. Some chemicals may not be allowed at all.
National and provincial legislation can be broadly broken into two categories: “upstream” and “downstream”. The two examples above are both “upstream” solutions, or those that seek to prevent toxic chemicals from entering our environment in the first place. To address the toxins already in circulation “downstream” solutions are also needed. Legislation in this category does not prevent the production of toxins but instead is aimed at reducing environmental pollution from toxins once they enter the waste stream. Examples of this type of legislation are sewage treatment and electronic recovery programs.
Right-to-Know Labeling
Right-to-know labeling provides much better protection than voluntary intiatives like Enviro Choice which tell you what products are good but don’t tell what products are bad. The European Union (EU) has the highest national standard for right-to-know labeling. In the EU, laws governing member states are known as Directives. One directive requires that all products sold in the EU have a label listing the product’s ingredients. The label must also show special hazard symbols if ingredients include carcinogens or reproductive toxins. Other directives spell out ingredients that may not be used in some products.Sewage Treatment
When it comes to sources of toxic pollution pouring into the marine environment, outdated sewage plants are a prime culprit. Sewage treatment is classified as primary, secondary or tertiary treatment. To fully eliminate toxic discharge, tertiary treatment is needed, such as the Canadian cities of Calgary, Edmonton and Whistler have. But Canada has no national standards for sewage treatment. Some cities, including Victoria and St. John’s, dump raw, untreated sewage into the ocean and don’t even meet the standard of some underdeveloped countries. In the U.S., the Clean Water Act requires that U.S. cities have the equivalent of secondary sewage treatment. In the EU all urban communities were required to upgrade to secondary sewage treatment by the end of 2005.
