Waste is an unavoidable by-product of human life. Despite the mediating influence of improved industrial recycling, the rate of generation of hazardous waste is more likely to increase than decline. There are no feasible waste-management strategies that do not include continued reliance on land-based disposal, and no economically-defensible landfill technologies that prevent long-term contaminant releases to groundwater. Proper siting represents the best possible route to environmental protection, but current socially-driven siting protocols promote poor sites at the expense of good ones. Environmentalist proclivities to oppose all new waste-disposal facilities, even if well-sited, are counterproductive, in that they promote the expansion of poorly-sited, poorly-designed older facilities. Policies of delay are popular with politicians who wish to avoid conflict, and with corporate managers who make decisions based on discounted future risks and costs. The health risks associated with hazardous-waste disposal are still uncertain, but they are apparently much smaller than those associated with many other widely-accepted activities. Wise environmental policy would promote prevention rather than remediation, regional aquifer protection rather than site-scale engineering design, and consideration of long-term risks rather than short-term economics.