








Everyone produces waste, by virtue of living in the twenty first century and taking advantage of the consumer choice offered by an industrialised society.
Around 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste is produced by over 100,000 businesses in England and Wales. This is the amount of waste produced by commercial and industrial sources which is sent to external treatment and disposal facilities. Very often the manufacture of apparently innocuous, everyday items results in the production of hazardous waste.
Changes in legislation mean that most, if not all businesses, produce hazardous waste.
The list of by-products and materials now classified as hazardous is extremely long and varied. The full list is published in a document called the European Waste Catalogue.
Here is just a sample of what it contains:
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Most of the materials or products whose names or descriptions contain the following words are typically classified as "Hazardous".