How NATO Influenced International Governance in Hazardous Waste

Waste production has increased exponentially during the last century. Municipal solid waste (MSW) production is estimated to have increased ten-fold between the years 1900 and 2000. ¹ The World Bank has calculated that the global population generated 2.24 billion tons of MSW in 2020, amounting to 0.79 kg per person per day, though actual per capita waste production varied widely between different places. ² The entirety of waste production is a lot more. A 2018 World Bank study showed MSW dwarfed by industrial waste, with a global average of 12.73 kg per person and day. ³ According to OECD data, annual per capita total waste generation within member countries ranged from 945 kg in Turkey to over 16,000 kg each in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden in 2014. ⁴ And there is no end in sight for further increasing waste production. Both the OECD and UNEP have published scenarios of continuing dramatically growing quantities of waste. ⁵

Among these data, the increase in ‘hazardous waste’ is considered particularly worrisome because of its potential to cause harm to the public through air and water contamination. ⁶ Its quantity has increased by 500 percent in the last 30 years, according to one calculation. An estimated 300 to 500 million tons of hazardous waste are produced per year. ⁷ According to the World Bank, this amounted to 0.32 kg/capita/day of hazardous waste. ⁸ Meanwhile, the European Union categorized 95.5 million tons, or 4.4 percent or the total amount of its waste, as hazardous in 2020. ⁹

In reality, these numbers are questionable, hampered by the fact that there is no universally agreed meaning of the term ‘hazardous waste’ with different countries using different definitions. ¹⁰ Perceived and attributed risk level is not the only way to structure an amorphous mass of material that gets discarded worldwide. Other methods include differentiations by origin (industrial waste, medical waste), by consistency (liquid waste, solid waste), by substance degradability (persistent waste), or by reusability (recyclable waste). Each comes with its own set of assumptions, connotations and policy repercussions, and all are social constructions with various degrees of overlap. Among these labels and irrespective of its lack of precision, ‘hazardous waste’ is an established term that produces over 200 million hits on Google.

Terms matter. They shape public assessments of a given situation, notably whether they do or do not represent threats or require specific interventions. Analyzing several country studies, Brian Wynne argued already in 1987 that inconsistency and imprecision in the term of ‘hazardous waste’ stood in the way of effective waste management while it also opened up space for negotiation processes between regulatory administrations and the public. ¹¹ Terms matter for descriptions of the world, for environmental negotiations that are based on such descriptions, and for policy decisions that are based on such negotiations. ¹² A category of ‘hazardous’ waste suggests that one distinct type of waste requires special treatment, including special management, disposal methods and legislation, and that, by extension, there is ‘non-hazardous’ waste, that does not require particular concern. Depending on how this category is defined, administrations, industries and citizens have more or fewer rights and responsibilities, and different substances end in different places in the environment for different periods of time.

As the references above demonstrate, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) play an important role in these processes, providing large part of the data and driving the framing of the topic. However, the underlying processes have received little scholarly attention so far. Historians and political scientists researching international policies on hazardous waste have focused overwhelmingly on transborder shipments and subsequent efforts to regulate or ban international trade with hazardous waste. ¹³ These analyses have largely been informed by an environmental justice perspective, following a debate set in the early 1990s when news about toxic waste from industrialized countries being discarded in low-income countries, often illegally and without consideration for the health of local residents, scandalized the public. NGOs, especially Greenpeace, condemned the practice as a new form of colonialism, and many scholars adopted similar views. ¹⁴ This focus is understandable, but it neglects the large majority of waste, categorized as hazardous. According to UNEP data, by 1992 less than 1 percent of hazardous waste produced in the US and OECD-Europe was transported to low-income countries in the Global South, and in many cases countries in the global South could and did exercise their right to refuse reception. ¹⁵ Undoubtedly, irresponsible and criminal dumping of hazardous waste in low-income countries did (and does) take place with potentially serious consequences for local populations, and real quantities may be higher than these official numbers suggest. However, these instances have only formed a very small component of a much larger picture. Hazardous waste could put vulnerable groups at risk even when traded within OECD countries, and related foreign policy decisions were tied to domestic situations. ¹⁶ Kate O’Neill has demonstrated how questions of trade, public attitudes and overall management need to be considered together, arguing that waste trade should to be conceptualized ‘as a function – indeed, the most visible symptom at the international level – of domestic-level problems of waste management, shared although in different forms, by most industrialized countries.’ ¹⁷

Though it has received little attention by historians so far, this connection was reflected in how IGOs addressed the topic. Considerations of hazardous waste management as a domestic challenge were addressed by IGOs early on, years before the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the first major international agreement on hazardous waste. IGOs collected information, commissioned studies and provided platforms for international discussions, in the process conceptualizing forms of waste and setting related agendas.

A surprisingly important part was played, rather counterintuitively, by NATO, whose Commission on Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) was the first organization to organize a large-scale, comprehensive project on ‘hazardous waste’ in the early 1970s. Though a substantial body of literature exists on the CCMS, this project is routinely mentioned in only passing, if at all. ¹⁸ This paper looks at this CCMS study and at how it framed ‘hazardous waste’, which perspectives it followed or ignored, and how this work affected subsequent thinking on the topic.

NATO came to address waste through two strands of developments. One was the introduction of waste into the international arena. Health organizations made the beginning. During the interwar years, the League of Nations Health Organization addressed waste within its projects on rural health and on housing. ¹⁹ After WWII, the World Health Organization continued work on sewage and solid municipal waste, while also adding studies on nuclear waste and on waste as a general challenge, addressed by a short-lived Scientific Group on the Treatment and Disposal of Wastes. ²⁰ These publications made clear that it was impossible to separate the health aspect of waste from related economic, political and environmental factors. Other IGOs followed. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) studied the risks and benefits of using organic waste as fertilizer. ²¹ In 1967, the European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA), an OECD suborganization, began coordinating international dumping operations by several European countries of nuclear waste into the Atlantic Ocean, a program that continued in declining form until 1982. ²² In the early 1970s, growing public awareness of waste management challenges drove a flurry of related legislation in industrialized countries. ²³ In the wake of these national activities, more IGOs took notice and found ways to integrate the topic into their emerging environmental programs. In January 1973, the OECD Environment Committee created a temporary Joint Policy Issues Group dedicated to issues of waste disposal and invited the EEC to help invite experts. ²⁴ In October 1973, UNECE launched a project on the collection, disposal, treatment and recycling of solid waste. ²⁵ In late November, 1973, WHO Europe convened a meeting in West Berlin of a Working Group dedicated ‘Toxic and other Hazardous Waste’, planned as a contribution to a larger manual on solid waste management. ²⁶

These initiatives reflected and contributed to a larger context of the environment getting established as a responsibility of IGOs. During the years leading up to the 1972 Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, several IGOs adopted environmental topics into their field of work, competing for recognition. The OECD, the UN European Commission for Europe (UNECE), and NATO were particularly active, trying to establish themselves as central reference institutions. ²⁷ Instead of ending the scramble for pre-eminence, the creation of the UN Environment Programme in 1972 merely added a new actor to the field of international environment. In an ambiguous mixture of competition and cooperation, all organizations kept up activities in international environment, of which waste became a component.

The CCMS emerged within this inter-agency competition but was also tied to overriding US policy and Cold War configurations. In April 1969, US President Nixon proposed that NATO add social and environmental topics into its work program. ²⁸ This initiative took other NATO members by surprise, but it was not out of line with NATO tradition. Though primarily a military alliance, NATO had always been conceptualized as more than that. Its founding document called for creating an Atlantic Community, involving various dimensions of cooperation. This ambition had given rise to several political committees, such as the Atlantic Community Committee (1951), the Committee on Information and Cultural Relations (1953), and the Science Committee (1958). ²⁹ Establishing a committee for non-military cooperation was, therefore, not without precedent, and the situation of the late 1960s made presidential advisers Henry Kissinger and Daniel Moynihan turn to this mechanism again. France had withdrawn from NATO's military structures in 1966 and, in view of European moves towards détente, opposition to the Soviet Block alone seemed no longer enough to win the hearts and minds of citizens on both sides of the Atlantic and, thereby, ensure internal coherence. Integrating social and environmental topics appeared a potentially fruitful way to consolidate the alliance. Secondly, Moynihan argued, the deterioration of the environment and resulting unrest genuinely threatened peace, calling for a more comprehensive concept of security than mere military deterrence. ³⁰ Finally, for Nixon, it provided another opportunity to present himself as the ‘environmental president,’ as his administration was gearing up for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. ³¹

European NATO members initially felt sidelined and relations between transatlantic partners remained less than ideal, but it was enough to allow practical work to go forward. ³² A Preparatory Committee devised ‘pilot studies’ as the central working mechanism of the CCMS. Pilot studies were proposed by member countries, which then took the lead in organizing related studies, including defining central questions, organizing meetings and financing events. Other countries participated according to their interest in the topic. At the end of the project, the results, if endorsed by the CCMS, would be recommended to NATO members for implementation. ³³ In December 1969, the CCMS began its work with three pilot studies: on coastal water pollution (Belgium as pilot country), air pollution (USA), and inland water pollution (Canada), soon complemented by further projects related to scientific knowledge and regional planning. ³⁴ In 1972, these pilot studies were ending, and delegates needed to begin thinking of follow-up projects. ³⁵

In November, the US delegates announced their intention to start a project on dangerous wastes. Inofficially, the US and German delegations agreed that Germany would act as pilot country, after discussing the topic with the EPA and the expanded European Community. As main topics, they chose the categorization of waste products, inherent risks and possibilities for disposal, recycling, and reductions through technological adjustments. ³⁶

Some months later, the West German delegation at the CCMS proposed a pilot study on the ‘Disposal of Hazardous Substances.’ In preparation, the German government invited experts to a workshop in Bonn in September 1973, which was accepted by delegates from the United States, France, Britain, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark. They agreed on the broad outlines of the project, framing the issue as the function of a prosperous economic development:

The steadily increasing industrial production implies increasing quantities of industrial waste, a great part of which consists of toxic material which can hardly be disposed of without considerable danger to the environment. The large variety of these substances and their various effects make it extremely difficult to elaborate a consistent concept for their disposal. Although a number of disposal methods on land and at sea are known and applied, the solutions satisfying the requirements of environmental protection are an exception. In many cases, well-tested technical methods, as well as adequate organizational systems to treat hazardous wastes in a proper manner, are lacking. This is why clear guidelines for the disposal of hazardous wastes only exist in a very few cases. But they are necessary, not only from the environmental point of view, but also for the guaranteeing of an undisturbed economic competition. ³⁷

In total, the project lasted from 1973 to 1981. It was a pivotal period for debates on the interaction between the economy and the environment. In 1972, the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, the first large-scale international conference on environmental questions, called on states to protect the environment for the benefit of future generations but also highlighted the importance of economic development. Principle Six of its Declaration stated that the ‘discharge of toxic substances or of other substances and the release of heat, in such quantities or concentrations as to exceed the capacity of the environment to render them harmless, must be halted…’ ⁴¹ Soon after, two oil shocks let the average world oil price soar from US$2.90 in 1973 to US$34 in 1980. ⁴² The situation plunged NATO countries into a state of crisis and clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of domestic economics to systemic disruptions. During the later part of the project in the late 1970s, scandals involving hazardous waste such as the Love Canal disaster drew the topic into public consciousness. ⁴³ These events provided plausible but contradictory lessons, either for the need for a fundamental restructuring of the international economy in ways that avoided the production and disposal of toxic substances, or for the need to safeguard the existing economies with only minor adjustments in order to maintain social stability.

Meanwhile, delegates from nine CCMS countries met several times a year to coordinate their activities and discuss questions and results both in small groups for the specific topics and in a larger group for the overall pilot study. The minutes of the meetings suggest remarkably candid discussions. Delegates appeared to eagerly share information about the experiences, data, experiments, problems and, often, their lack of knowledge. While the conventions addressing ocean dumping were about global rule setting and regulation, reflecting the end of considerations about what to do about dangerous waste, the CCMS meetings were about their beginning. The aim was not to regulate but to find information and inspiration for possible solutions. Sometimes, the minutes read like those of a self-help group of people struggling to find a solution for a problem of their own making that is overpowering them. ⁴⁴

The project did not result in one consistent set of guidelines. In fact, owing to the diversity of circumstances in the participating countries, it did not produce one single report. Instead, all working groups produced copious reports, most covering several hundreds of pages. Across both the records of meetings and publications of those years, several key themes emerged: One was the extent to which there was no generally agreed understanding of the object of the study at its beginning. There was no consensus on the definition of hazardous waste nor even about the appropriate name. The term was used in the US, however ‘chemical waste’ was used in the Netherlands and in Denmark, ‘poisonous waste’ in the UK, ‘toxic waste’ in Belgium and ‘special waste’ in Germany, the UK, and France. ⁴⁵ The confusion was not merely about vocabulary. Beyond a general understanding that hazardous waste caused some form of harm, approaches varied widely. Denmark used a list of 39 chemicals, Germany one of 35 using additional criteria such as a minimum quantity. France had a list of 200 chemicals without specific criteria, the Netherlands operated with a list of four classes of chemicals, each with different criteria; the UK used 20 waste categories while in the US different States used a variety of categorizations and definitions. Everywhere, regulations were in a developmental stage and some substances were categorized as hazardous in one place but not in a neighboring country. ⁴⁶ One consequence was that measured quantities differed widely, making comparisons between countries basically impossible. Countries reported having between 50,000 tons (Norway) and just under two million tons (USA) of hazardous waste per year of which they incinerated between 5.6 percent (Britain and USA) and 50 percent (Netherlands). ⁴⁷ Implicitly, the lack of coherence called into question the project itself. If participants could not agree what they were working on, the concept itself seemed in jeopardy.

Trying to provide some orientation, the West German government prepared a manual of 90 substances, considered most significant for waste management. It listed basic data such as its chemical formula, melting point, solubility in water, toxicity range for short-term exposure but also descriptions of their production use and effects on humans and the environment. It was useful technical information but without a common definition it was a list of individual substances rather than an illustration of a coherent phenomenon. As the report made clear, work in the field was only just beginning. ⁴⁸ But it did serve to strengthen the idea that the entity of ‘hazardous waste’ existed and merely required further specification to become more functional.

An assessment of the situation was complicated not only by patchy and unclear information and definitions but also by contested views on who should be responsible for the management of hazardous waste. Here, the principles of market economies that should minimize governmental interference in economic activities and the recently negotiated polluter-pays-principle were in contradiction to governmental duties to safeguard population health. The question went to the heart of the modern economic life: how active a role should local and national governments take without this either unduly burdening or helping companies of any given country, domestically and in relations to those of other countries? Leaving waste management to the private sector made life easy for authorities and it could be legitimized as making the producers of waste live up to their own responsibilities. In most countries, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, and France, the industry producing the hazardous waste was itself in charge of disposal, though it sometimes received governmental funding. ⁴⁹ In principle, this was also true for the US, but the responsibility mainly rested with states and many had no hazardous waste regulations, and there were often few disposal sites, if any. In Denmark and the UK, the task was left to the municipalities or local authorities. ⁵⁰ Requirements of special notifications for or control of production, transportation, and disposal varied widely, ranging from clear and strict regulations to only vague guidelines or none at all. Remarkably, despite the recognized risk emanating from the substances, the countries generally had no specific provisions for liability of damages caused by hazardous waste or for the financing of disposal arrangements. ⁵¹

The second theme involved the struggle of administrations to find ways of discarding material they would prefer not to have had at all. The most widespread method of disposal in all countries, by far, involved landfills. In Britain, 90 percent of waste was left on landfills and even Norway, large parts of whose geography were unsuitable for landfills, had 450–500 sites. ⁵² Managing landfills was complex, entailing the selection, creation, operation, closure, and post-closure care of hazardous waste management facilities. ⁵³ Countries had very different election and evaluation criteria for potential hazardous waste landfill sites, if, indeed, they had any. Long-term neglect had consequences. In Ratingen, Germany, many tons of ammunition containing organic arsenic compounds, buried in 1918, began re-emerging. Landfills in the UK revealed widespread problems regarding soil pollution, leachate, polluting or threatening to pollute ground water, as well atmospheric emissions resulting from evaporations or fires. In the US, the EPA was concerned about over 400 documented cases of leaching in closed landfills. ⁵⁴ To different degrees, all countries were facing problems regarding landfills, and all were testing procedures to find solutions, ranging from trying new lining materials to improving methods to select, establish, or evacuate sites. Most efforts were at an experimental stage and most were directed at waste generally, barely touching on the specific challenges of toxic waste, of which clearly large quantities were ending up on landfills already. ⁵⁵ Apparently, all authorities realized that their main method of waste disposal was seriously deficient but did not have clearly superior alternatives and were belatedly trying to find ways to make it less deficient.

An alternative method involved underground disposal in, preferably inactive, mines, either permanently or as temporary storage until sufficient material had accumulated to warrant recycling. The responsible study group considered it an acceptable policy for waste for which elimination, destruction, or neutralization was not possible, provided some topographic requirements were satisfied. It acknowledged that the practice involved potentially numerous risks resulting from reactions of the hazardous chemicals with their surroundings or with one another but considered the probability low if the site was well chosen. ⁵⁶ A working group of the second phase studied incinerations, or thermal treatment. The method was perceived to sometimes convert toxicants into harmless compounds, providing useful heat and avoiding some of the problems of landfills. However, the need to control potentially hazardous emission, effluents, and residues made incineration a comparatively expensive method. The report laid bare how little was known about the topic: several (unnamed) governments did not know how many incinerators existed on its territory and also disagreed on whether incineration plants privately operated by industry should even be included in the survey. Generally, it was easier for large industrial firms to operate their own incinerators according to their own needs. But smaller firms were often unable to have their own sites, and establishing public incinerators was difficult given pushback from municipalities and local populations and the unpredictable quantity and nature of the waste to be expected. Consequently, at the time, the majority of incineration plants were operated internally by industry, though this situation was expected to change in the coming years. Legal regulations varied widely, ranging from a confusing line-up of responsible environmental oversight bodies in the UK to basically none in the US. ⁵⁷

The report on chemical, physical, and biological treatment of hazardous industrial waste aimed at raising awareness ‘of the alternatives to land disposal and incineration for management of industrial wastes.’ ⁵⁸ It was basically a search for technical solutions, though it was clear that such processes could reduce but not eliminate the volume of hazardous waste. Encouraging such efforts, the report included technical information about a large number of processes which industries were using or testing for use and suggested that the OECD might take over further evaluation of such methods after the end of the CCMS pilot project. ⁵⁹

The CCMS tried to discourage the export and import of hazardous wastes since, as the Belgian delegate commented, no country wanted ‘to become the waste basket of others and that international transfer of wastes should be restricted to cases necessary.’ ⁶⁰ But suitable disposal sites were few and often at a distance from the places where the hazardous material was produced, so, inevitably, getting it from one place to the other involved transportation. The report on transportation, built on the 1956 UN report on Transport of Dangerous Goods, which had recommended that containers with dangerous substances should be clearly labeled, denoting their specific risks. ⁶¹ The CCMS sought to link the UN guidelines with the specific challenges of hazardous waste and to begin a process of complementing the already long list of dangerous goods included in the UN document with a very large number of additional substances considered toxic in various NATO member countries. It also pointed out the need to consider not only acute hazards but also long-term effects. It was clearly a lengthy process that went beyond the possibilities of a brief CCMS pilot project, so the report called for asking the OECD to provide classification criteria for waste substances so that they could be placed under the UN recommendations. ⁶² As noted below, at the time, the OECD Waste Policy Management Group was studying various waste-related topics, but was as yet unconvinced by the category of ‘hazardous waste’.

In theory, the management of hazardous waste should include the reclamation of valuable raw materials, and the report on Recommended Procedures argued that this practice would become more economically attractive if and when material shortages would become more widespread. ⁶³ But most studies paid little attention to this aspect, and the one report focusing on the prospects for recycling one specific substance, chromium, demonstrated why. Chromium groups were virtually ubiquitous, used for metallurgical, chemical, and refractory applications, including surface treatment of metals and plastics for hardening, anti-corrosion and decoration purposes, also for tanning and the production of cement and paints. It was used in the textile and automobile industry as well as in optics and aeronautics, making it a central element of numerous industrial processes. The most toxic component was chromium VI. Its inhalation and ingestion could lead to ulceration, dermatitis, respiratory ailments, and digestive disorders in humans, and unclear environmental effects. The French government was interested in recycling chromium partly as a way to reduce the toxic burden of the effluents and dust, but mainly because it hoped to regain a raw material of which France had no deposits and needed to import 300,000 tons per year. A plant in Northern France produced chromium salts for chemical applications, discharged large quantities of chrome effluents and had developed two patented recycling processes. However, instead of solving both the pollution and raw material problem, the process turned out overly-expensive and was given up. ⁶⁴

Indeed, recycling of hazardous wastes seemed very limited, given that it usually required technically demanding and expensive processes, and research was only beginning. The little tangible information coming from only a handful of countries was not promising: West Germany only recycled waste oils and solvents. In the Netherlands, it was catalysts, sludges (for copper), pickling baths, photographic waste (for silver), and acids. In the US, decentrally organized waste exchanges recycled a small quantity of unspecified wastes. In the UK, apparently no hazardous wastes at all were recycled. ⁶⁵ Following up on its earlier report on chromium, the French delegation contributed a long study on similarly widespread metal finishing wastes. Existing practices washed away copious amounts of potentially useful but environmentally harmful substances, such as chromic acid, cyanides or metals, and the report provided a wealth of details regarding the technology and economics of surface finishings. Overall, the report bemoaned the economically wasteful and environmentally harm nature of existing policies and made a few recommendations such as strengthening regulations, employing ‘waste managers,’ applying more stringently the polluter-pays principle and making use of specialized collective treatments centers. ⁶⁶

A potentially more promising approach involved intra-industry waste exchanges, which might usefully get supported by governments, provided authorities paid attention to confidentiality aspects. ⁶⁷ In 1976, delegates commented that industry in the US and the UK had shown some interest, but that EEC had already begun studying the question, so they decided not to discuss in detail within CCMS. ⁶⁸ The topic was later taken up by UNECE (see below).

Occasionally, a document would suggest that the best way to deal with hazardous waste was to avoid it. For instance, the report on Recommended Procedures for Hazardous Waste Management offered a view of waste as a function of socio-economic decisions rather than an inevitability. ⁶⁹ The report on Organization similarly argued that ‘Waste reduction and utilization should have priority over waste disposal.’ ⁷⁰ But these statements remained isolated exceptions, unsupported by tangible actions or even serious considerations on how this could be achieved. After all, the entire CCMS study was dedicated to the Disposal of Hazardous Wastes, presupposing its existence as a given. The overall approach was one of industrial wastes as ‘the ugly counterpart of industrial progress’, unavoidable as long as there was industry. ⁷¹ Avoiding waste generation either was not included in the studies or, in one case, explicitly rejected as a solution, since, regardless of how much recycling was done, there would ‘always remain a certain proportion of hazardous wastes which will have to be converted by means of appropriate methods of treatment into a form in which they can be finally deposited without detriment to the environment. ⁷²

The end of the pilot study coincided with a decrease of status of the CCMS. The committee never fulfilled its intended purpose of endearing NATO to skeptical citizens in its member countries, and it further lost a lot of clout after East-West tensions intensified following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and NATO focused on its military dimension. ⁷³ However, the project was successfully completed, and at the end of the second phase, a lengthy final report was self-congratulatory: ‘After seven years of intensive work, the conclusion that the Pilot Study is thus far the most comprehensive and effective international effort in the area of hazardous waste management seems to be justified.’ ⁷⁴ It probably was. But its impact was not so much its direct results, which did not rise to the level of authoritative recommendations, but in the way the project triggered similar activities in other organizations even before it had ended.

In February 1977, the Senior Advisers for Environment of UNECE decided to dedicate their next meeting to a discussion of ‘Control of the flow of toxic substances throughout the environment.’ ⁷⁵ As contribution, the US delegation sent the analysis of Recommended Procedures for Hazardous Waste Management it had just prepared for the CCMS together with Canadian colleagues. ⁷⁶ UNECE added material from countries that were no members of NATO and, therefore, not of the CCMS. A focus emerged when several Scandinavian countries reported on their experience with exchange schemes. The Swedish contribution explicitly argued that a lot of waste could be recovered if suppliers and purchasers could be connected. However, experience with Nordic Waste Material Exchange Center, founded in 1974, was sobering. In total, about 300 items had been advertised, of which 60 percent had attracted interests among potential buyers and merely 20 percent had actually resulted in a successful transaction. Plastic was the most frequently offered item by far, but its success rate was low. Most successful outcomes were achieved with inorganic chemicals, followed by textiles, paper, and solvents. No customers were found for acid wastes. ⁷⁷ The Norwegian report also stated with compelling honesty that toxic waste was ‘to a great extent disposed of unchecked.’ ⁷⁸ Meanwhile, UNECE, apparently impressed by the lack of knowledge about the issue which the CCMS study was revealing, initiated its own survey about national and international legislation and experience regarding hazardous waste in March 1979. ⁷⁹

The Council of the European Economic Communities (EEC) responded to the CCMS study by preparing a directive on hazardous waste. It could build on a prior directive on waste in general, issued in July 1975, which stipulated that member states should establish authorities responsible for waste disposal operations in a given territory and should report on the waste disposal situation to the Commission every three years. These rather stringent rules were substantially mitigated, however, by exempting various forms of waste, notably those that could be considered hazardous such as radioactive waste, waste from mining and work in quarries, and gaseous emissions. ⁸⁰ Three months later, the EEC sent observers to the meeting dedicated to landfills, which the UK was organizing for the CCMS project. ⁸¹ Shortly afterwards, the EEC Commission drafted a directive specifically for ‘toxic and dangerous waste’. The version that was approved by the EEC Council in March 1978, largely repeated the 1975 directive, adding that any person or institution handling toxic waste required a governmental permit. It referred the need to report specifically to toxic wastes while, however, expanding the list of exempted substances to include waste resulting from explosives, hospital, and household wastes as well as other wastes covered by specific Community rules. During the consultation process, the European Parliament strengthened provisions, making it compulsory that member states establish storage sites and intervene in case of emergencies. It also tried to strengthen civil liability, which was, however, rejected by the Commission. ⁸²

Meanwhile, the WHO also published a report on hazardous waste in 1977. Even more strongly governance oriented than the EEC, it insisted that effective hazardous waste management required the formation of administrative and enforcing authorities with adequate statutory and legal powers to survey the amounts and types of wastes, to draw up waste disposal plans and see to its implementation and to provide adequate monitoring and inspection systems. Above all, this authority should make sufficient and adequate sites for disposal available and license disposal and should bear full overall control and responsibility for all hazardous waste management decisions. ⁸³

Not everybody was easily won over to the category of hazardous waste. The OECD sent observers to the CCMS meetings but did not immediately adopt the concept. In 1978, it asked their member countries for regular reports on Recent Developments in the Field of Waste Management. Though most of the country reports focused on problematic types of waste, easily defined as hazardous, the series was never conceptualized in this way and did not collect data accordingly. ⁸⁴ In late 1979, an introductory paper by the OECD Waste Management Policy Group, after discussing definitions of the term, concluded that ‘from the viewpoint of economics, the differences between hazardous wastes and other land disposed wastes is one of degree rather than of nature.’ Nevertheless, even though doubting the existence of hazardous waste the group nevertheless felt a need to launch a project on its economic dimension, with specific reference to the CCMS and its role of having been ‘in the vanguard of international efforts to study the management of industrial hazardous wastes.’ ⁸⁵ Clearly, the concept was well established, and going against the assumption that it was a recognizable entity was no longer an option.

By the early 1980s, this work brought tangible results in international agreements. In 1982, UNEP instituted a working group in charge developing guidelines for the management of hazardous wastes which drafted guidelines that eventually developed the Cairo Guidelines for the Environmentally Sound Management of Hazardous Wastes (Cairo Guidelines), adopted by UNEP in 1987. ⁸⁶ These Cairo Guidelines drew on various, sometimes overlapping IGO recommendations: states should protect human health and the environment, minimize the generation of hazardous waste and reduce transfrontier movements (CCMS), prepare plans for the management of hazardous wastes, including collection, separation and disposal (WHO), promote low-waste technology (UNECE), suggest provisions for insurance and compensation processes (EEC). ⁸⁷ Collectively, their contributions provided a sense of shared international concept of what constituted hazardous waste and its appropriate management.

By 1985, the OECD, the Economic Commission for Europe, the WHO, and the German Marshall Fund had published reports on international hazardous waste activities, while the International Solid Waste Association ISWA hosted a Working Group on Hazardous Waste. ⁸⁸ Meanwhile, WHO was cooperating with the World Bank on a technical manual for the safe disposal of hazardous waste in developing countries. ⁸⁹ Among these, ironically, the activities of the OECD stand out. Though it was late to warm to the concept of ‘hazardous waste’, it established an ad hoc commission in charge of transfrontier movement of hazardous waste in 1984. A year later, it organized a conference on International Cooperation concerning Transfrontier Movements of Hazardous Wastes which laid the ground for the subsequent Basel Convention, signed in 1989. ⁹⁰ In the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘hazardous waste’ had become part of international governance.

The CCMS temporarily revived its activities, though it never regained its earlier position relative to commissions of other IGOs. In 2006, it merged with the Science Committee into the Science for Peace and Security Programme seeking collaboration with countries in Eastern Europe and Russia. ⁹¹

Despite its comparatively unobtrusive existence, the CCMS left a distinct mark on the governance of hazardous waste. Its findings were interesting in their own right, demonstrating, above all, how much was not known in the participating countries. Contributing to the various working groups forced the participating governments to gather, systematize and consider data they might not otherwise have looked for, or at least not yet and in that particular constellation of conceptualizations. The relatively sheltered framework of a small group of politically and culturally similar countries facilitated candid discussions and sharing of information. But the outcome raised more questions than answers and was clearly the beginning rather than the end point of a longer process. And this, precisely, was its significance. By being the first within a group of IGOs beginning to establish themselves within international environmentalism, the CCMS got to set the agenda for problematic wastes, effectively establishing ‘hazardous waste’ as a recognized category, deserving special treatment distinct from regular waste While this development was not far-fetched, since most countries already used some expression that set apart a form of waste they considered particularly problematic, it was also not a foregone conclusion, as doubts about this systematization within the OECD showed. Given the importance of the OECD for the subsequent international agreements and the belated involvement of UNEP, well after the CCMS had presented its studies, other pathways regulating different or all forms of waste would have been conceivable. In addition, the CCMS framed the challenge as one of ‘disposal’, discouraging systemic reviews of structures that led to the production of large quantities of toxic substances. Under the competing pressures resulting from the environmental movement, the oil crisis and growing neoliberalism, the CCMS largely came out in favor of end-of-pipe solutions, though it did occasionally include more far-reaching considerations.

Overall, this framing drew attention to the potential dangers of some forms of waste to human health and to the environment and the need for special protective measures, while normalizing and potentially diverting attention away from other forms of waste. At the same time, CCMS activities provided an important push towards international guidelines and regulations of hazardous waste management and trade. In the process, a little known committee, consisting of a small group of NATO countries, had a lasting influence on international waste governance.