The Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005 were implemented on 16th July 2005.

Key changes from the old Special Waste Regulations:-
? Producers of Hazardous Waste will be required to pre-register before it can be collected from their premises
? European Waste Catalogue (EWC) are applied by the regulations and will affect a much wider range of producers.

From 16th July 2005, it will be an offence for hazardous waste to be collected from a site that has not been registered or is exempt.

Non-exempt sites producing hazardous waste must be registered even if they are unlikely to have that waste collected for some time. The Environment Agency states that it is an offence to produce hazardous waste on site and not be registered.

The Regulations will implement the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) list of Hazardous Wastes, under the List of Wastes (England) Regulations 2005. This can be found at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20050895.htm

There are exemptions and these are:-
1/ Domestic premises
2/ Premises which only produce a maximum cumulative total of 200kg or less of Hazardous* Waste per year AND
3/ fall into the following categories:- Offices; Shops; Agriculture; Caravans; Residential & Nursing Homes; Universities, Schools & Colleges; Hospitals, Doctors, Dentists, Health Centres; Vets; Charities; Prisons; Ships.

ALL OTHER PREMISES MUST REGISTER

Other information required will be the industry sector SIC code and details of numbers of employees on site etc.

The EA will accept postal registrations, phone registrations and on line through the following website www.environment-agency.gov.uk. The latter is cheapest at a cost of ?18.00 per site. There is also a guide that takes you through the registration process.

Other useful information can be obtained from http://www.hazardouswaste.org.uk/

Each site has to have a separate registration although multiple sites can be registered on the same notification. A head office could register all its sites centrally, but each site would have a separate unique registration number and require a separate fee.

The Regulations will require a new consignment note to be used from 16th July 2005.
A fee for each consignment will be paid to the EA by the carrier with their quarterly returns to the Agency. These fees are not major (?5 to ?20 depending on type of consignment and method of reporting the return) but clearly, this will need to be charged back.

Where a site is part of a collection round each site would need copy of the consignment note, so the process of tracking and paper trail may get complex especially as each collection will count as a consignment for fee charging purposes.

The Regulations ban the mixing of Hazardous waste and state that it must be stored separately on site. However, clarification on the interpretation of this is still awaited from the EA.

As always PPL-Pollution Prevention is ready to assist you in any way with any aspect of pollution monitoring, control & prevention and a comprehensive range of environmental services and products.

Call us on 01484 845000; fax 0n 01484 845222 or email help@pollutionprevention .co.uk