The biggest environmental success in Maine this decade was brought off not by Birkenstock-clad protesters but by the work-boot, hard-hat and pin-stripe crowds of business and industry. Since 1990, they have reduced toxic pollution well beyond state requirements and made Maine a healthier place to live. They have an opportunity to do even better under a new version of the law that started this cleanup.

The Toxics and Hazardous Waste Reduction Law, up for reauthorization and before the Natural Resources Committee of the Legislature today, set goals for industry to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals used and emitted. But many business people found their own inspiration — being careful with toxic discharges meant finding more efficient production processes, which meant saving money. Where the law required emission cuts of 20 percent, Maine industry cut them by 51 percent. Industry met the 20 percent reduction in the amount of toxic waste produced by cutting it by 26 percent.

The toxics used in Maine comprise a chemistry class worth of dangerous substances — sulfuric acid, ammonia, toluene, chlorine, formaldehyde, phenol, nitric acid, chloroform, hydrochloric acid and a hundred others. In all, 419 million pounds of these chemicals were shipped in Maine in 1995, sometimes with serious consequences. Between 1993 and ’95, 142 transportation accidents involving toxic chemicals were reported in the state.

And that’s the hole in what is otherwise effective legislation. While reductions in the amount of hazardous waste produced and toxic emissions were mandatory, cuts in the amount of chemicals used were not. The result was that instead of exceeding the reduction goal, as occured in the other two categories, industry, on the whole, never even got close to the toxic-chemical use goal of a 20 percent cut, reducing use by only 9 percent.

Removing the voluntary nature of the toxic-use component of the law makes sense — under a couple of conditions. Businesses should have the same waivers to be exempted from the law as they have under the emissions and waste portions of the law. Those waivers kick in when a business does not have a good alternative to its current methods of operation, when it already has taken all the steps to reducing toxics that it can, when product quality would suffer or when legal obligations prevent it from making process changes. Except in cases where companies are using an excess of toxic chemicals without good reason, these waivers would keep the state from getting involved in the way a company manufacturers its products.

But cutting emissions under some circumstances may be a simpler, less expensive process than cutting the use of these chemicals. It may be that use reductions should not be tied to the same timetable as emissions. A slower timetable for use would give legislators a better sense of what sort of cuts were possible without stepping on important industrial processes.

Of course, if the past eight years is a guide, businesses will again go beyond the scope of the law and the timetable will be unnecessary.