EPA's Common Sense Initiative Seeks Partners in the Metal Finishing Sector
In 1994, U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner launched the Common Sense Initiative (CSI) to explore industry-specific strategies that promote "cleaner, cheaper, smarter" environmental performance. Several pilot projects in Michigan, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have been testing innovative, cost-effective ways to help the metal finishing sector improve environmental performance.
The EPA, metal finishers trade associations, and interested stakeholders have developed a Strategic Goals Program. The Strategic Goals Program seeks a voluntary commitment from metal finishers to make a number of pollution prevention and efficiency improvements by the year 2002.
Benefits to metal finishers participating in the program include demonstration of environmental leadership, possibility of more operational flexibility, technical assistance in cost-effective pollution prevention, compliance tools and assistance, and research and technology development.
The Surface Finishing Industry Council (SFIC), the American Electroplaters & Surface Finishers (AESF), and other trade associations encourage metal finishing facilities to participate in CSI. For information about signing up with CSI, contact Bob McDowell, Sr., at (716) 425-7500. For more information about North Carolina’s efforts for the CSI-Metal Finishing Initiative, contact Terry Albrecht, P.E., N.C. DPPEA, at (704) 232-5080.
