5. Waste treatment
These are waste treatment appropriate measures for a regulated facility permitted to store, treat or transfer (or both) non-hazardous and inert waste.
1. Waste treatment must have a clear and defined benefit. You must fully understand, monitor and optimise your waste treatment process to make sure that you treat waste effectively and efficiently. The treated output material must meet your expectations and be suitable for its intended disposal or recovery route. You must identify and characterise emissions from the process and take appropriate measures to control them at source.
2. You must prevent unwanted or unsuitable material from entering subsequent waste treatment processes.
You must have accurate and up-to-date written details of your treatment activities and the abatement and control equipment you are using. You should include information about the characteristics of the waste to be treated and the waste treatment processes, including:
- simplified process flow sheets that show the origin of the emissions
- diagrams of the main plant items where they have environmental relevance, for example, storage, tanks, treatment and abatement plant design
- details of physical processes for example separation, compaction, shredding, heating, cooling or washing
- an equipment inventory, detailing plant type and design parameters
- waste types to be subjected to the process
- the control system philosophy and how the control system incorporates environmental monitoring information
- process flow diagrams (schematics)
- the hourly processing capability of waste treatment equipment
- a summary of operating and maintenance procedures
The extent of the information about your treatment activities will depend on the nature, scale and complexity of your facility and the range of environmental impacts it may have. It is also based on the type and amount of wastes processed.
3. You must have up-to-date written details of the measures you will take during abnormal operating conditions to make sure you continue to comply with permit conditions. Abnormal operating conditions include:
- unexpected releases
- start-up
- momentary stoppages
- shutdown
1. Soil and aggregate washing is a physico-chemical treatment (not a separation or sorting activity) and you must categorise the outputs as set out in WM3.
1. You must not make assumptions about the nature of the outputs from your waste treatment processes. You must make sure that you appropriately classify the outputs following WM3 If you do not, you may breach your Duty of Care for waste and commit an offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
This is particularly important for fines arising from shredding and trommelling processes, which generally:
- require disposal at cost
- contain a range of contaminants
- are likely to be subject to a mirror entry code in the LoW, for example 19 12 11* versus 19 12 12
2. Any hazardous waste taken from your facility must be consigned following our guidance Dispose of hazardous waste.
3. If an output is not waste, for example because end-of-waste criteria have been met, or the material has been produced in accordance with a Quality Protocol (resource framework), then you do not need to store the output within your permitted area. However, non-waste materials are still able to cause pollution, for which you remain liable. You must implement appropriate measures to prevent and minimise risks of pollution from non-waste and waste materials.
1. If you are handling or treating waste before you send it to landfill follow our guidance Dispose of waste to landfill.