You make an excellent point here Michael. If you are working professionally, you have a real need to make it your business that you know the shop making your boards isn't just dumping the waste streams out the back door. Here in the States, if the shop produced that waste for your benefit, it's your waste. It was produced by your contractor, for your benefit, at your behest and on your dime. If the EPA finds that your contractor is illegally dumping your waste, guess who's liable. That's right, you all are.

On the other hand, it's hard to believe that any hobbiest could ever produce enough waste to exceed the legal disposal limits of anything they would be able to buy. Which has a lot to do with why the chemicals are getting harder and harder to buy. As for the plating chemistries, when you do need to dispose of the product, it's not difficult to precipitate out the metal and neutralize the rest. And if you use LPKF's cheistries, they also provide a disposal service (for a hefty fee).