Environment Agency Public Registers
The Environmental Protection Act places a Duty of Care on those in the waste chain to ensure that their waste is handled correctly. This means that it must be:
- Collected by a registered waste carrier
- Transported under either a waste transfer note or consignment note
- Taken to a site which is approved to receive the waste
The question often asked by waste producers is how far this process should go? Unfortunately, this is not defined by the Government and Defra Guidance on the subject simply states ‘A producer is under no specific duty to audit his waste's final destination. However, undertaking such an audit and subsequent periodic site visits would be a prudent means of protecting his position by being able to demonstrate the steps he had taken to prevent illegal treatment of his waste.’ It is therefore down to the waste producer to determine the depth of verification it applies to those involved in the process of managing their waste and in the event that waste was flytipped, for instance, the authorities would be looking to ensure that a waste producer had taken reasonable steps to check the status of those entrusted with its waste.
One simple way to conduct such a process is through the Public Registers. The EA has a particularly good one in that is gives visibility to practically all registrations. Anyone can therefore go on line and check whether the company they are dealing with is:
- A register waste carrier, broker or dealer
- Has an Environmental Permit
- Has a hazardous waste site registration
- Has one of the new Exemptions
- Is registered under IPPC
Selecting ‘All’ in the register and then entering a company’s name will show all the registrations associated with that company.
This is an excellent tool although it must be caveated with the fact that it is sometimes a few months out of date.
The Scottish and Northern Irish public registers are not quite so sophisticated, but do contain lists of all companies registered.
There are then separate Public Registers for other regulations:
- A list of WEEE treatment and export sites – given that WEEE should only be taken to an approved facility, it is essential to know where your WEEE is going as it is not simply enough to know that the person collecting your WEEE is a registered waste carrier.
- A list of battery treatment operators – again, waste batteries should only be going through these.
- A list of packaging recyclers and exporters.
At the end of the day, it is down to a waste producer to determine the level of due diligence applied and using a reputable waste management company goes a long way towards that. But as the EA never fail to remind people, ignorance is no excuse and there is no shortage of businesses that have been caught out by unscrupulous operators.
