360 Environmental Limited - Hazardous Waste

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Hazardous Waste

Are you affected?
What is required?
Further information

Are you affected?

Hazardous waste is defined by the List of Wastes/European Waste Catalogue where wastes considered to be hazardous are marked with an asterisk. It includes things that you would naturally expect to be hazardous – such a certain sludges or chemical waste from refining processes. But it also includes waste that arises in every day business activity. These include

Fluorescent tubes
Cathode ray tube televisions and monitors
LCD screens and laptops (see EA Guidance Note)
CFC containing fridges and freezers
Certain types of batteries
Mineral oil or oil soaked rags and cleaners

If your business premises produces this type of waste, you CANNOT put it in the general waste bin and must have it separately collected.

The document that defines more complex Hazardous Wastes is WM2 (updated April 2011).

An EA have produced a list of Guides for Hazardous Waste Management (update Oct 2011).

What is Hazardous Waste – HWR01
Do I need to notify my premises? – HWR02A
How to register your premises
Regulatory position statement on premises notification
How to fill in registrations and renewals Excel spreadsheet - HWR02C
Consignment Note Guide - HWR03 (replaces HWR03A-F April 2011)
Consignee Returns – HWR04a
Consignee Returns - XML Schema Guide - HWR04b
Completing the Hazardous Waste Return
Record Keeping – HWR05 (changed as of April 2011)
Classification and Coding of Wastes from Treatment Facilities – HWR06
Mobile Services – HWR07
How to classify waste oils and waste containing oil - HWR08
Classification of electronic displays
Guidance for Enforcement and Prosecution Policy

The movement of Hazardous Waste between two sites - regardless of whether the sites belong to the same business or the waste is owned by the carrier - must be accompanied by a Consignment Note.

The EA have published a standard 3 part Consignment Note with a new Continuation sheet. This is the new amended Consignment Note revised by the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations. This MUST be used from 28 September for both single and multiple consignments, but the old single and multiple notes can still be used until then.

More details on the changes are here.

The new note requires the use of the revised Recovery and Disposal Codes and the new Hazard Codes.

They must contain a valid SIC 2003 code and the correct EWC codes.

And where they are used for waste that must be transported under Carriage of Dangerous Goods, they must show the UN Code(s).

If you receive Hazardous Waste, you are a Consignee. Consignees have to submit quarterly Consignee returns to the EA listing all the consignments they have received and paying the EA a fee per consignment - £10/single consignment and £5/multiple consignment (where they are submitted electronically). Details of this process can be found in HWR04 above.
However, where the following wastes are moved under consignment notes, a special derogation has been provided where effectively, all the consignments in one quarter received at the first consignee are only counted as one consignment. These wastes are shown below (start date in brackets):

recovered refrigerant gases (1 January 2009)
dry cell portable batteries (1 October 2008)
air freshener aerosol canisters from toilets or washrooms (1 October 2007)
agricultural veterinary waste (1 October 2007)
other hazardous lighting equipment, such as gas-discharge lamps (1 January 2007)
fluorescent tubes (1 January 2006)
lead-acid motor vehicle batteries (1 January 2006)
samples of hazardous waste being sent to a laboratory for analysis (1 April 2010)
undepolluted end of life vehicles (1 October 2010)

Details of the conditions of these derogations can be found on the Agency website.

Where these wastes are received, consignee returns should be completed according to these instructions.

What is required?

The requirements for dealing with Hazardous Waste are different in Scotland and Northern Ireland to England and Wales.

For England and Wales, hazardous waste is dealt with under the Hazardous Waste Regulations (amended under the Amendment Regulations 2009 which imposes the 500kg exemption threshold and more recently by the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011). Any business that generates waste classed as ‘Hazardous’ under the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) must register as a hazardous waste producer with the Environment Agency before they can have hazardous waste collected from their site.
There are exemptions. Where a site produces less that 500kgs per year, it does not need to register and can have its hazardous waste collected without a registration number.

The registration process can be done through three methods:

Online – at a cost of £18 per site registered
By phone – at a cost of £23 per site (Phone 08708 502858)
By mail – at a cost of £28 per site

The process requires information relating to the site – address, contact details, number of staff etc – and is AN ANNUAL REQUIREMENT.
On registration, the EA will provide a site registration number that is unique for each premises and that then stays with the premises ad infinitum., but the site MUST be re-registered each year.

All registered sites are listed on the EA public register.

An EA explanation of which sites should be registered can be found here.

For Scotland, hazardous waste is controlled by the Special Waste Regulations, is still known as ‘Special Waste’ and must be consigned - SEPA have produced a comprehensive Guide. A business that produces special waste (the same as hazardous waste in England and Wales) does NOT have to register their site. Instead, there is a pre-notification procedure where the company that is asked to collect the waste must submit a notification to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency 3 days in advance of the collection except for lead-acid batteries or subsequent collections of the same waste. Notification can now be paid for online and users can opt for a consignment note or just the number if they wish to do their own consignment note.

For Northern Ireland, the Hazardous Waste Regulations have replaced the Special Waste Regulations, but the system operates very similar to before and to Scotland - pre-notification and consignment notes. A Guidance Note explains the requirements.