Overview

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 gave EPA the responsibility of regulating solid waste, a subset of which is hazardous waste.

RCRA addresses various topics relating to solid waste management including: hazardous waste management, used oil management, and land disposal restrictions.

The RCRA regulations seek to manage hazardous waste from "cradle to grave," or from the point of generation to ultimate disposal.

EPA delegates the authority to implement and enforce hazardous waste management regulations to the states once they show that they have regulations that are at least as stringent as EPA's regulations. In many cases, state regulations are more demanding than EPA's regulations. As it would not be feasible to cover all state regulations here, only the federal regulations are cited. The federal hazardous waste regulations can be found in Title 40 of the CFR, Parts 260 through 299 (40 CFR 260 - 299).