Recycling Program Design, Management, and Participation: A National Survey of Municipal Experience

materials. Disposal of urban wastes in the old county dump is a practice quickly nearing extinction in the United States. More stringent national and state environmental standards and a citizenry concerned with the public health consequences of traditional modes of disposal have contributed to a crisis in solid waste disposal that dominates the political agendas of many local governments. Financially and politically, it is now much more difficult to dispose of the nation's steadily growing volume of waste that by some estimates will increase this decade from 3.6 to 4.0 pounds per person, per day. By 2000, local officials will have to manage some 190 million tons of solid waste annually (Office of Technology Assessment, 1989).