Waste Duty of Care Code of Practice
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Waste Duty of Care Code of Practice November 2018 Presented to Parliament and to the National Assembly for Wales pursuant to Section 34(9) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 © Crown copyright 2018 You may re-use this information (excluding logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence v.3. To view this licence visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ or email [email protected] This publication is available at www.gov.uk/government/publications Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at [email protected] or [email protected] www.gov.uk/defra Contents 1. Overview .......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Scope of the duty of care ................................................................................................. 2 2.1 Duty of care: who it applies to .................................................................................... 2 2.2 Waste holders: what your duty of care applies to ....................................................... 3 2.3 Waste holders: what your duty of care does not apply to ........................................... 3 2.4 Waste holders: how long your duty of care lasts ........................................................ 4 3. Waste holders: waste duty of care requirements ............................................................. 5 3.1 Prevent unauthorised or harmful deposit, treatment or disposal ................................ 5 3.2 Prevent a breach of an environmental permit or a breach of a permit condition ........ 6 3.3 Prevent the escape of waste ...................................................................................... 6 3.4 Transfer waste to an authorised person ..................................................................... 7 3.5 Provide an accurate description of waste ................................................................... 8 3.6 Retention of waste documentation ........................................................................... 10 4. Other waste laws for waste holders ............................................................................... 11 4.1 Hazardous Waste ..................................................................................................... 11 4.2 Producer Responsibility Regulations ........................................................................ 11 4.3 Separate Collection .................................................................................................. 11 4.4 Landfill ...................................................................................................................... 12 4.5 Importing or exporting waste .................................................................................... 13 5. Occupiers of domestic property: waste duty of care requirements ................................ 14 5.1 Who does this duty of care apply to? ....................................................................... 14 5.2 What waste is covered by this duty of care? ............................................................ 14 5.3 How should you dispose of your waste? .................................................................. 14 5.4 What reasonable measures should you take when a private business takes your waste? ............................................................................................................................ 15 5.5 What reasonable measures should you take when taking your waste to a private waste site? ..................................................................................................................... 15 5.6 What evidence can you use to demonstrate you have met your duty of care? ........ 16 5.7 What happens if you do not meet your duty of care? ............................................... 16 1. Overview The duty of care legislation makes provision for the safe management of waste to protect human health and the environment. The code of practice (the Code) sets out practical guidance on how to meet your waste duty of care requirements. It is issued under section 34(7) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (the EPA) in relation to the duty of care set out in Section 34(1) of that Act. This Code applies to you if you import, produce, carry, keep, treat, dispose of or, as a dealer or broker have control of, certain waste in England or Wales. Failure to comply with the duty of care is an offence with no upper limit on the courts’ power to fine. In some instances a fixed penalty notice may be issued for failure to comply with the duty of care in place of prosecution. The Code is admissible as evidence in legal proceedings for Section 34(1) offences and its rules must be taken into account where relevant to questions raised in the case. If your waste activities are authorised or registered in Scotland or Northern Ireland but you deal with waste in England or Wales, you need to follow this Code. If you operate across borders, you need to follow Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s codes of practice alongside this one. The regulators for the duty of care are the Environment Agency (EA) in England, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) in Wales and local authorities. The occupiers of domestic property disposing of household waste from that property are exempted from the section 34(1) duty of care by and have a separate duty of care for the disposal of that waste under Section 34(2A). Non-statutory guidance is included at the end of the Code on how to meet that duty of care. 1 2. Scope of the duty of care 2.1 Duty of care: who it applies to The duty of care applies to anyone who imports, produces, carries, keeps, treats, disposes of, or are a dealer or broker that has control of, controlled waste (referred to below for the purpose of this Code as a “waste holder”). Waste holders are a: • waste producer – any person whose activities produce waste. This includes private sector businesses such as shops, offices, factories and tradespersons (e.g. electricians, builders, glaziers and plumbers) and public sector services such as schools, hospitals and prisons, as well as charities and voluntary and community groups. It also includes permitted operations or exempt facilities that produce waste as part of their activities. If you carry out a waste operation that changes the nature or composition of the waste, you are regarded as a producer of the waste. Waste producers play a key role under the duty of care requirements as they are in the best position to identify the nature and characteristics of the waste • waste carrier – any person, who normally and regularly collects, carries or transports waste in the course of any business or with a view to profit, including those that produce and transport their own waste e.g. builders and landscape gardeners • waste dealer – any person, business or organisation that buys waste with the aim of subsequently selling it, including in circumstances where the dealer does not take physical possession of the waste • waste broker – any person, business or organisation that arranges waste transportation and management of waste on behalf of another party, such as organisations contracting out waste collection services e.g. local authorities, supermarkets and producer responsibility compliance schemes • waste manager – any person involved in the collection, transport, recovery or disposal of controlled waste, including the supervision of these operations, the after- care of disposal sites and actions taken as a dealer or broker A separate duty of care applies to householders (occupiers of a domestic property), limited to taking all reasonable measures available to them to ensure their waste is only transferred to an authorised person. For the purposes of this Code, occupiers of domestic property are not treated as a ‘waste holder’ as defined above, when dealing with household waste produced on that property. Separate guidance on duty of care requirements for occupiers of domestic property are set out in section 5. 2 2.2 Waste holders: what your duty of care applies to The duty of care requirements apply to household, industrial and commercial waste, also known as controlled waste. Waste is any substance or object that the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard. The meaning of “discard” applies to “disposal” and “recovery” operations and processes and can be intentional or unintentional on the part of the holder. Whether a substance or object is waste is determined on a case by case basis. If you are unsure you can use the ‘legal definition of waste guidance’ to check if something is classified as waste. The following definitions describe common waste operations and processes: “Recovery” is any operation which has the main result of waste serving a useful purpose by replacing non-waste materials that would otherwise have been used to fulfil a particular function. An example is incineration for energy recovery (for further examples see Annex II to the Waste Framework Directive). Preparing for re-use and recycling are both recovery operations. “Preparing for re-use” is the operation or process of checking, cleaning or repairing products that have previously been discarded so that they can be re-used without any other pre-processing, for example repairing bicycles, furniture or electrical or electronic equipment which have been previously discarded by their