Before the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, most of our disposal was conducted through open dumping or placed in loosely-regulated local landfills. Its 1976 amendment, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, was created with the intent of promoting better solid waste disposal methods, mainly by granting money to local and state governments for research on waste disposal.
RCRA and its amendments addressed three pressing issues and concerns of that time: the need for a solid waste management system, that dealing with hazardous wastes required special provisions, and the encouragement of resource conservation and recovery through recycling and reuse of resources.
Before RCRA, a large portion of the hazardous waste in the United States was dumped very close to the site where it was generated, or generators of hazardous waste paid for its shipment to off-site disposal areas. Records at disposal sights were not kept and the property was often sold to others who had no information about any presence of hazardous materials. The Love Canal story is a perfect example of this type of crisis that demonstrated the need for a regulation like RCRA.
