ChemRegs Newsletter – February 2018

Mixing of hazardous waste

The issue of mixing items of hazardous waste remains a common error among companies who produce and consign hazardous waste. Different types of waste must be segregated from each other and hazardous waste must not be mixed with non-hazardous waste or with other types (categories) of hazardous waste.

If you do wish to mix hazardous waste, you must apply for an environmental permit and demonstrate that the mixing of these wastes is the best available technique.

The error seems to occur where insufficient training and resources have been given to those who have responsibility in the organization for the hazardous waste storage, segregation and consignment for disposal.

What appears to be a recurring issue is when hazardous wastes are segregated from controlled wastes. The controlled wastes are sorted into paper, cardboard, plastics, and metals etc, then the hazardous wastes are lumped into one category of hazardous waste.

Put very simply, if you place three items of waste in a receptacle you get a receptacle with three wastes in it. Each of the three wastes must be described and classified on the hazardous waste consignment note.

Collecting discrete items of waste in a vehicle/container is not classed as mixing, as long as:

• The wastes are not physically mixed together and no cross contamination can occur during storage and transport;
• Each waste in the container is separately classified, described, and quantified, (number of units, bags, drums etc), on the accompanying waste documentation;
• Any container used for collection does not result in one or more of the wastes being hidden.

It is therefore essential that companies have reliable segregation procedures in place to stop waste being mixed. If for any reason a batch of mixed waste is produced, the waste producer has the duty to separate it. This also applies to anyone that later receives the waste.

Separating a batch of mixed waste is only not required if it is not technically and economically feasible to do so. But separation is required where health issues need addressing or to reduce any substantial environmental risks. Each waste in the mixed waste must be still be described and classified separately.

Other News

Defra consultation on waste crime

A consultation on increased powers for enforcement authorities regarding waste crime is being conducted by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Welsh Government.

Criminal activity and poor performance in the waste industry creates shortcuts for waste to be illegally dumped, disposed of cheaply or fly-tipped. This results in resources not being recycled or recovered and fed back into the economy to increase resource efficiency.

Waste crime has serious impacts on the natural environment through pollution to air, water and land. Communities suffer from odour, litter, dust, vermin, and fly infestations from poor performing waste sites or fly-tipped waste. Fires at waste sites located nearby to key infrastructure and local amenities can risk the closure of main roads, railway lines, schools and hospitals, as well as damaging amenity for nearby communities

To this end, Defra has launched a consultation about tackling crime and poor performance in the waste sector.

The consultation is divided into three sections:

• Part A focuses on raising the standard of operator competence across all permitted waste sites by strengthening the regulators’ assessment and enforcement abilities;
• Part B is about reforming the waste exemptions regime within the waste permitting system;
• Part C covers the introduction of a new Fixed Penalty Notice for household Duty of Care offences for fly-tipping.

The consultation proposals apply to England and Wales. References to ‘the regulators’ are references to the Environment Agency (EA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW). However, some facilities that operate under the environmental permitting regime are regulated by local authorities.

Part B will affect companies who have both waste exemptions and waste permits at a single site. The proposals include changing the regulations so that, as is already the case for installations, an exempt waste operation cannot be carried out at a permitted waste operation. This would mean that exempt waste operations would not be able to be carried out within the permitted area that is designated on the approved site plan agreed as part of the permitting process.

It is also proposed that where an exempt waste operation has direct technical links with other activities carried under an adjacent permitted waste site, this exempt waste operation should also be included in the permit. An example would be where the waste processed as part of a waste exemption is going to be subjected to treatment or is resulting from treatment at an adjacent permitted site.

An exception to the rule for adjacent exempt waste activities would be where the waste being stored outside the permitted area prior to treatment has been originally produced at that place (i.e. storage of waste at the place of production).

This measure does not affect places where exempt waste activities are carried out adjacent to permitted operations where there are no direct technical links to that permitted operation.

Existing waste permit operators would need to apply for a variation to their permit to be able to continue to carry out additional activities covered by the exemptions or stop them altogether.

Also affected will be sites that do not have a waste permit but have multiple waste exemptions. There is currently no limit to the number of exemptions that can be registered at a single site. This means that an operator could register multiple exemptions for separate waste activities but actually use them to support a large-scale operation that would be more properly regulated through a permit.

The proposals therefore aim to limit the number of exemptions that can be registered at a single site.

Specific waste exemptions are also being looked at, including exemptions S1 – Storage of waste in secure containers and S2 – Storage of waste in a secure place. The main purpose of exemptions S1 and S2 is to allow single stream recyclable wastes to be stored for a limited time before they are sent to another site for recovery. Sorting or any kind of treatment is not allowed under these exemptions.

Defra recognise the practical and economic need for these exemptions to allow for gathering and bulking wastes together for onward transport for recovery. However, by reducing the limits and having stricter controls on waste types, quantities and storage conditions, such activities are expected to be low risk as well as beneficial for resource recovery. One of the proposals is to split the existing S1 and S2 exemptions into six new exemptions.

It is also proposed make it compulsory for operators to keep and make records available on request for all waste exemptions. The information that is kept and recorded would include: chronological records of the quantity, nature, origin and, where relevant, destination and treatment method of all waste disposed of or recovered in the course of that operation. Most of this information will be already kept and recorded by those organisations subject to the Duty of Care regulations, and these organisations could therefore use their existing records to meet their exemption requirements. For ease of access it could be required that this information is recorded and stored in an electronic format or in a system identified by the regulator.

If you think these proposals will affect your operation, then Defra and the Welsh Government are seeking views on the proposed approach and invite comments by 26 March 2018.

The consultation can be found at

https://consult.defra.gov.uk/waste/crime-and-poor-performance-in-the-waste-sector/

Inspectors focusing on classification and labelling of mixtures

EU and EEA Member States have started checking whether the classification and labelling of a mixture corresponds to the information presented in the safety data sheet for the mixture.

The inspections began in January 2018 under the enforcement project named REACH-EN-FORCE-6 (REF-6). This is being undertaken by the Forum for Exchange of Information on Enforcement (Forum), which is a body of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), with members appointed by the Member States.

The Forum coordinates various enforcement projects, one of the main ones being the REACH-EN-FORCE (REF) projects that are designed to harmonise enforcement in each Member State and check the current level of compliance with regard to particular obligations imposed on industry by the REACH, CLP and PIC regulations.

The REF projects are carried out by inspectors based in the national authorities in the participating Member States. The resulting information is collected by ECHA and the Forum Working Group. A final report on the findings of the REF project is then produced. Ultimately, the goal of the REF projects is to promote common practices and harmonised approaches among the enforcement authorities in the Member States but also to improve the compliance of registrants with the REACH, CLP and PIC regulations.

Previous projects include:

• REF-1 on registration, pre-registration and SDS
• REF-2 on obligations of downstream users – formulators of mixtures
• REF-3 on registration (focusing on Only Representatives and cooperation with customs)
• REF-4 on restrictions
• REF-5 on extended SDS

The REF-6 project was adopted by the Forum at the end of 2016 and preparation began in 2017, including training the inspectors and preparing the project manual. 31 European countries will participate in the project during the operational phase in 2018 and a report on the results of the actual inspections will be available in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Inspections will focus on the quality of sections 2 and 3 of the SDS, as well as information in 9, 11 and 12; checking the classification of the mixture and the consistency of the labels with the SDS.

The next project, REF-7, is expected to focus on the “Enforcement of Registration obligations after the last registration deadline in cooperation with customs authorities including the verification of the strictly control conditions applicable to the substances registered as intermediates”.

For more information on anything in this Newsletter, please contact us at info@chemregs.co.uk