Taking Stock Volume 16

Introduction

A key objective of the Taking Stock report series, under the CEC’s North American Pollutant Release and Transfer Register Initiative, is to raise awareness of, and promote access to, data and information on releases and transfers of industrial pollutants in North America to improve the understanding of the sources and management of pollutants of common concern in the region and support decisions relating to pollution prevention and sustainablility.

Taking Stock is based primarily on publicly available data reported to the three North American Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs):

• Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI)
• The United States’ Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)
• Mexico’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (Registro de Emisiones y Transferencias de Contaminantes—RETC)

An important function of the Taking Stock report is to explore aspects of North American PRTR data that are of interest or concern to stakeholders and that merit further examination. Through analyses that include additional sources of information, Taking Stock adds value to PRTR data by providing important context to improve our understanding of the scope and nature of facility releases and transfers, risks associated with reported pollutants, and progress and challenges relative to industrial sustainability in North America.

At the meeting of the North American PRTR Initiative held in Montreal in February 2020, participants expressed concern about the lack of clarity with respect to reported off-site transfers to disposal. Key questions relate to uncertainty about the exact nature and potential impacts of some industrial waste disposal practices, as well as the lack of information on the final disposition of pollutants transferred to a third party for off-site disposal, which often involves a transfer of responsibility for the management of these pollutants. Feedback received during the meeting, as well as additional discussions with representatives of the three PRTR programs and an initial review of the data, led to the decision to include a special analysis of transfers to disposal in the Taking Stock report.

This analysis seeks to address the following questions:

1. What are the types and volumes of industrial pollutants transported off-site to disposal, including across international borders?
2. What are the environmental and human health risks associated with different disposal practices?
3. What problems are raised by the transfer of responsibility for off-site waste disposal to external contractors?
4. Are existing laws and regulations sufficient to limit the potential negative impacts of waste disposal?
5. What are the existing and emerging alternatives to current waste generation and disposal practices?

Organization and scope of this report

Two chapters comprise this edition of Taking Stock:

• Chapter 1 presents an overview of the releases and transfers reported by North American facilities to the three PRTR programs of the region from 2014 through 2018, by type of release or transfer, industry sector, and pollutant.
• Chapter 2 presents a feature analysis of off-site transfers to disposal reported between 2014 and 2018. It provides information about the various disposal practices employed by facilities in the region, the risks associated with these practices, and the relevant laws and regulations that exist in each country. The last section presents information about alternatives to the generation and disposal of industrial waste that can address the challenge of responsible waste management, which is inextricably linked to society’s current patterns of production and consumption.

This report is based on publicly available data on releases and transfers of more than 500 pollutants reported by approximately 23,500 industrial facilities to their respective PRTRs between 2014 and 2018. These data have been compiled, harmonized, and made available by the CEC through the Taking Stock Online website and searchable database. Readers can find more information about the comparability of North American data, along with factors to consider when assessing the risk of pollutants, in sections 1.4 and 1.5 of this report and in “Understanding Taking Stock”.

Annual pollutant release and transfer data are often published with updates by the national programs, following quality assurance/quality control checks and industry revisions. Data are also periodically refreshed in Taking Stock Online to capture these revisions. Where data featured in the analyses in this report are recognized to be reporting errors that have yet to be revised, these are brought to the reader’s attention.  The data used for the analyses in this report are from the NPRI, TRI and RETC datasets from March 2021, September 2020, and February 2020, respectively.