Steve Lerner

About the author: Steve Lerner writes on environmental issues and is also the author of Beyond the Earth Summit: Conversations with Advocates of Sustainable Development.

One of the central debates over toxic wastes concerns public funding versus private initiative. On one side, advocates of public solutions want government oversight, regulation, and strict public accounting of the nation's hazardous wastes. Advocates of the private sector see individual initiative, motivated by idealism as well as profit, as the more effective solution to toxic cleanup. The experience of William M. Haney and Christopher J. Nagel, of Molten Metal Technology, Inc. (MMT), lends strong support for the advocates of the private sector. Together, the two have developed a process that completely recycles hazardous waste without generating the hazardous byproducts of...