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Further information on waste consultants

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“Definition of waste” service suspended

Continued suspension. The Environment Agency (EA) has announced that it will extend the suspension of its definition of waste service until April 2021. The service was run by a team of experts in the agency giving businesses an opinion on whether a material should be classed as waste. The EA scrapped it in October 2016 and then reinstated a paid-for version of the service in 2018. In September 2020 the EA decided to temporarily suspend it until at least 1 January 2021 so that it could focus its attention elsewhere during the coronavirus pandemic.

How will it affect businesses? If you use the service you will be impacted because you cannot submit any requests to the EA on the waste status of your material until it re-starts. You need to understand the definition of waste so that you know what to do with the materials you have. By understanding whether something is waste you can identify what rules apply to it, when it might cease to be classed as waste and when you don’t need to classify a material.

Note. If you don’t understand the status of your materials, it is easy to breach waste regulations. Fearful of getting it wrong, you might also be encouraged to discard materials that could easily be reused or repurposed in new products or processes. This will increase your costs and reduce your resource efficiency.

Not popular. Many affected by this have criticised the decision to continue with the suspension of the service, with some calling for the service to sit within other government departments. However, these complaints seem to have fallen on deaf ears. As it stands, there’s no guarantee that the service will make a comeback.

Tip. As you’re no longer able to ask the EA, if you need expert advice on waste classification, speak to your waste contractor or engage a specialist consultant (see The next step ).

For a link to further information on waste consultants, visit https://www.tips-and-advice.co.uk , Download Zone, year 15, issue 9.