The Environment Agency (EA) is calling on members of the waste and resources industry to respond to a consultation on its proposed changes to guidance on assessing and classifying waste.

The ‘Revising existing hazardous waste guidance to incorporate new legislation’ consultation outlines that the List of Waste and Hazardous Waste criteria will be changing in the United Kingdom from 1 June 2015, and, as such, updated waste classification and assessment guidance (currently in version ‘Technical Guidance WM2’) will be needed to accommodate the new laws.

Reason for updated guidance

Currently, waste assessment and classification in the UK is based upon:

• the Waste Framework Directive (WFD);
• the List of Wastes Decision (otherwise known as European Waste Catalogues); and
• the Dangerous Substances Directive and Dangerous Preparations Directive (implemented in the UK by the Chemical (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations (CHIP).

However, next year will see chemical legislation replaced by the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation (CLP), which introduces a new system of chemical classification based on hazard classes, categories and statement codes (rather than risk phrases and categories of danger).

This will therefore require the Waste Directive and the List of Waste (or European Waste Catalogues) to be amended, and to reflect this, require updated WM guidance.

Changes to the guidance

As such, ‘Technical Guidance WM2’ will be updated to cover a number of changes, including:

• clarifying that the framework applies to the assessment and classification of waste;
• clarifying how the guidance applies to mining waste;
• updating all the hazardous waste properties relating to chemicals so that they are based on the CLP hazard classes, categories and statement codes;
• adding a new chapter for persistent organic pollutants;
• including a persistent organic pollutants step in the assessment;
• updating references, tables and examples to hazard classes, categories and statement codes;
• adding specific codes for red mud from alumina production, metallic mercury, and partly stabilised mercury;
• amending code 06 08 02 to replace silicones with chlorosilanes; and
• updating appendix data sources to reflect CLP.

According to the EA, the hazardous property assessment guidance (Appendix C) has seen the most significant changes (due to CLP), which are ‘significant enough to invalidate any existing assessment of hazardous properties made under the current criteria’.

Interested parties are now being asked to detail whether the waste cassification and assessment ‘Technical Guidance WM3’ ‘correctly presents the legislation’ and if there are ‘any impacts [the EA needs] to be made aware of’.

Speaking to Resource, Bob McIntyre, Environment and Business Advisor at the Environment Agency, said: "Next summer the way waste is assessed and classified in the United Kingdom will change significantly, as a result of legal changes. This means that the Environment Agency needs to update its current UK guidance on waste classifications so our customers can easily understand the ways in which these changes will affect them. We are consulting from now until 3 February 2015 on the changes we have made to the guidance.However, this is not expected to have a significant impact of types and quantity of hazardous waste.

“We want to hear from all those who have responsibility for waste. I think it could be of particular interest to businesses that produce waste, companies that collect, recycle, recover or dispose of waste, consultants, brokers and trade associations."

The EA is hosting this consultation on behalf of the joint agencies (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, and Natural Resources Wales) but all devolved agencies will see responses in full.

The consultation will run for a period of 12 weeks until 3 February 2015.

A full summary of the responses is expected to be published by the EA by 1 August 2015.

Read and respond to the ‘Revising existing hazardous waste guidance to incorporate new legislation’ consultation.