Hazardous Waste Management...

Waste is considered to be hazardous when it contains substances or has properties that make it caustic, carcinogenic, corrosive, ecotoxic, flammable, harmful, infectious, irritant, mutagenic, toxic, or an oxidising agent.

Other words commonly associated with waste that help to identify it as hazardous include aerosol, contaminated, fluorescent, interceptor, laboratory, nuclear and radioactive.

The ruling waste laws are the Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005. Essentially these are concerned with pollution prevention, resource conservation and preservation of the environment. (Refer also to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 regarding your organisation’s responsibilities for safe use and storage of hazardous materials prior to their becoming waste).

Many everyday products found in the workplace are now classed as hazardous waste. This means you may no longer dispose of them in your general waste container. Such items include (but are not restricted to) adhesives, antifreeze, batteries, contaminated rags and wipes, fire extinguishers, fluorescent tubes, inks, paints, polishes, solvents and varnishes.

Typical Hazardous Wastes

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:

To help you determine whether a particular waste is hazardous, the best source of information is the Environment Agency’s Technical Guidance WM2. WM2 guides you through the classification process by starting with the Consolidated European Waste Catalogue (EWC). This enables an EWC code to be allocated to each waste stream and this in turn will determine whether the waste is non-hazardous, a ‘mirror entry’ hazardous waste or an ‘absolute entry’ hazardous waste.

If a waste is designated an absolute entry EWC code it is a hazardous waste, irrespective of the concentration of any hazardous components.

For mirror entry EWC codes, the concentrations of the hazardous components or contaminants must be considered.

Hazardous waste management can be quite complicated and even within the waste management industry there is some debate with regard to classification of certain wastes.

Grundon's Hazardous Waste Management Services

Grundon’s Technical Department is staffed by fully qualified chemists, highly experienced in the classification, handling, management and disposal of most types of hazardous waste. We are always up to date with the latest UK and European legislation, and have responded to it with some of the most efficient and technically advanced solutions available in the UK. Our operational area for hazardous waste collections covers most of the UK.

For help and advice or to place an order, please contact the Grundon Technical Department at our Ewelme depot:

Tel: 01491 834340
Fax: 01491 834319
E-mail: technical@grundon.com

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