News - Updated 23 November 2007

Pre-Treatment for Non-Hazardous Wastes
Most of our customers have now put pre-treatment procedures in place, or are sending wastes to our Recycling Facility rather than landfill. But once again, ignorance of this important change seems to have been widespread, despite sending out letters to everyone before the deadline!

Soils and Other Construction/Demolition Wastes – How We Can Help
In the past, source segregation was used as pre-treatment for hazardous wastes such as contaminated soil). Under the new rules, source segregation is going to be harder to apply. It will only be accepted if both non-hazardous and hazardous materials are being removed.

So if only non-hazardous material is being moved, it needs pre-treatment. Alab Environmental Services Ltd have installed a trommel at our South Tees Recycling Facility (STRF) so that you don’t have to do delay shifting material off your site. You can send it to the recycling facility where it can be pre-treated. We’ll recover whatever we can, and only the unwanted fractions will be sent on to landfill.

Contact Mark Howard (07890 567899) or Tom Anderson (07989 515740) for more details.

A reminder of the key points of the legislation:

The Aim of Pre-Treatment
The primary aims of treatment reflect the philosophy of the Landfill Directive. It is intended to:

• reduce the amount of waste landfilled
• reduce the impact when it is landfilled

The Three Point Test
The key to approving a treatment method is the three-point test. All three points must be satisfied for all of the waste to have been treated:

1. It must be a physical, thermal, chemical or biological process including sorting.
2. It must change the characteristics of the waste.
3. It must do so in order to:
   (a) reduce its volume; or
   (b) reduce its hazardous nature; or
   (c) facilitate its handling; or
   (d) enhance recovery.

Unlike hazardous waste, no waste acceptance criteria are applied to non-hazardous waste.
But you must have proved that it is non-hazardous in an initial Level 1 characterisation exercise.

Responsibility
Once again, responsibility is placed on the landfill operator, who must be sure that the necessary pre-treatment has been done, and is appropriate for the waste. It’s likely that, as with hazardous waste, this will be the Environment Agency’s primary focus for assessing compliance.

The waste producer is ultimately responsible for the treatment, though they can ask their waste management company to actually do it.

Original document available from the Environment Agency: phone 08708 506 506
Download it from: http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/pdf/GEHO0207BLWJ-e-e.pdf?lang=_e

Complied by: Roger Robinson

Whilst we take every care to ensure the accuracy of items included, we cannot take responsibility for errors or omissions.