Cleaning up eastern Europe: Proposals for a coordinated European hazardous waste management regime

In the past century, technological development has stimulated tremendous advances in manufacturing productivity and raised living standards throughout the many industrialized nations of the modern world. Only in the last quarter century, however, has the global community begun to recognize the environmental costs of this technological progress. Of principal concern is the large-scale generation by virtually all commercial and industrial sources of waste by-products posing substantial risks to human health or the environment. Methods of the appropriate management of these hazardous or toxic waste streams have received considerable attention in most developed states during the past two decades. More recently, the international community has recognized that hazardous waste management practices adopted by individual nations may pose significant transboundary environmental concerns. Extra-territorial impacts may arise directly, from the exportation of hazardous waste from one state to another, or indirectly, from the contamination of open-quotes migratory mediaclose quotes like air resources and water supplies. Recognition in the scientific community of hazardous waste's contribution to global pollution has progressed at the same time that a new sense of responsibility for the global environment has evolved in the international legal community. Accordingly, the international community has recently initiated several efforts to address the transboundary nature of hazardous waste management practices