Hazardous Waste: What It Is and How the Rules Classify It

In one line

Hazardous waste is defined three ways, and the rules that govern it apply to everything except five things that have rules of their own.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules 2016, made under sections 6, 8 and 25 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, define hazardous waste as any waste which by reason of characteristics such as physical, chemical, biological, reactive, toxic, flammable, explosive or corrosive causes danger or is likely to cause danger to health or environment, whether alone or in contact with other wastes or substances, and include waste specified under column (3) of Schedule I, waste having concentrations equal to or more than the limits specified for the constituents in class A and class B of Schedule II or any of the characteristics specified in class C of that Schedule, and wastes specified in Part A of Schedule III in respect of import or export or not so specified but exhibiting hazardous characteristics; and they apply to the management of hazardous and other wastes as specified in the Schedules, but not to waste water and exhaust gases covered by the Water Act 1974 and the Air Act 1981, to wastes from the operation of ships beyond five kilometres of the relevant baseline covered by the Merchant Shipping Act 1958, to radioactive wastes covered by the Atomic Energy Act 1962, to bio-medical wastes, or to municipal solid wastes.

The three routes into the definition

Route one, the process list. Schedule I sets out processes in column (2) and the hazardous wastes they generate in column (3). Thirty-eight process entries, from petrochemical processes and crude oil and natural gas production through metal surface treatment, leather tanneries, the electronics industry and pulp and paper to the chemical processing of ores. A waste generated by a listed process and named in column (3) is hazardous.

Route two, the constituent and characteristic test. Schedule II has three classes. Class A and class B set concentration limits for constituents; class C sets characteristics. A waste at or above a class A or class B limit, or exhibiting a class C characteristic, is hazardous whatever process produced it.

Route three, the import and export list. Schedule III Part A lists wastes for the purposes of import and export, and a waste not in Part A which nevertheless exhibits hazardous characteristics is also caught for that purpose.

The design is the same as in the rules of 1989: a list to remove argument, and a test to catch what the list has not reached.

The five exclusions

Each is excluded because another instrument covers it, and a student should name the instrument.