455D.4  Waste volume reduction policies.
  1.  It is the policy of this state to encourage the development of waste volume reduction programs and education at the local government level through incentives, technical assistance, grants, and other practical measures.
  2.  It is the policy of this state to support and encourage the development of new uses and markets for recycled goods, placing emphasis on the development, in Iowa, of businesses relating to waste reduction and recycling.
  3.  The provision of education concerning waste volume reduction at the elementary through high school levels and through community organizations will enhance the success of local programs requiring public involvement.
  4.  This state supports and encourages manufacturing methods which are environmentally sustainable, technologically safe, and ecologically sound. The state shall encourage manufacturing methods which enhance waste reduction by creating products with longer usage life, and by creating products which are adaptable to secondary uses, require less input material, and decrease resource consumption.
  5.  The people of this state recognize that a variety of benefits result from a comprehensive waste reduction policy including the following environmental, economic, governmental, and public benefits:
  a.  Not producing waste in the first instance is the most certain means for avoiding the widely recognized health and environmental damage associated with waste. Although waste reduction will never eliminate all wastes, to the extent that waste reduction is achieved it results in the most certain form of direct risk reduction.
  b.  Waste reduction may result in reduced pollution control costs for industry by stimulating and promoting beneficial technological and management reorganization within industry in place of pollution control strategies which channel capital into nonproductive pollution control expenditures.
  c.  The government is better able to administer programs which offer a variety of benefits to industry and which reduce the overall cost of government involvement than it is to administer programs which offer few benefits to industry and require increasingly extensive, complex, and costly governmental actions.
  d.  Public confidence in environmental policies of the government is important for the effectiveness of these policies. Waste reduction poses no adverse environmental and public health effects and does not, therefore, lead to increased public concern. Waste reduction also increases the public confidence that the government and industry are doing all that is possible to protect human health and the environment.
89 Acts, ch 272, §4