Other Relevant Legislation

Environment Act 1995

Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as amended)

Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991

Hazardous Waste Regulations 2005

Landfill Directive (99/31/EC)

Landfill (England and Wales) Regulations 2002

List of Wastes (England) Regulations 2005

Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992

Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER)

Waste Framework Directive 75/442/EEC (amended under EC Directive 91/156/EEC)

Waste Management (England and Wales) Regulations 2006

Water Resources Act 1991

Environment Act 1995

This act created Environment Agencies and introduced arrangements for:

• cleaning up contaminated land;

• protecting water;

• managing air quality; and

• reducing packaging waste.

Under this act, the Environment Agencies have powers to give polluters (or potential polluters) notice to carry out work to clean up or prevent pollution. To dispose of waste to controlled waters, people need permission from the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency may carry out anti-pollution work if they think that controlled waters have been (or are likely to be) polluted, and then recover costs from the polluters.

Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as amended)

Under this act, it is an offence to treat, keep or dispose of ‘controlled waste’ in a way likely to pollute the environment or harm people. It is also an offence to keep, treat or dispose of ‘controlled waste’ without a waste-management licence, unless the activity in question is ‘exempt’ under the Waste Management Licensing Regulations 1994. Under the act, people who produce waste must make sure that it is passed only to an authorised person who can transport, recycle or dispose of it safely.

Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991

These regulations describe the actions which anyone who produces, imports, keeps, stores, transports, treats, recycles or disposes of ‘controlled waste’ must take. These people must: • store the waste safely so that it does not cause pollution or harm anyone;

• transfer it only to someone who is authorised to take it (such as someone who holds a waste-management licence or is a registered waste carrier); and

• when passing it on to someone else, provide a written description of the waste and fill in a transfer note. These records must be kept for two years and a copy must be provided to the Environment Agency if they ask for one.

Hazardous Waste Regulations 2005

These regulations replace the Special Waste Regulations, and bring into force the obligations of the EC Hazardous Waste Directive.  Under these regulations, those who produce hazardous waste must register with the Environment Agency.

The regulations:

• adopt the definition of hazardous waste set out in the Hazardous Waste Directive;

• make it necessary for those who produce hazardous waste to register their sites with the Environment Agency and send them records every three months; and

• set out the conditions for those handling or treating hazardous waste.

Landfill Directive (99/31/EC)

This directive aims to prevent or reduce (as far as possible) damage to the environment from disposing of waste to landfill by:

• setting targets for diverting waste away from landfill to other disposal methods (with targets for recovering and recycling waste and reducing the amount of bio-degradable household waste disposed of to landfill);

• pre-treating of waste before it is disposed of to landfill;

• classifying landfill sites as ‘hazardous’, ‘non-hazardous’ and ‘inert’ according to the type of waste they can handle (and banning the disposal of both hazardous and non-hazardous wastes to landfill); and

• banning (or phasing out) the disposal of certain wastes to landfill.

Landfill (England and Wales) Regulations 2002

These regulations bring into force the Landfill Directive (see above) in England and Wales and set out conditions to make sure that:

• landfill sites are appropriately located, designed, managed and maintained;

• the waste acceptance criteria specified in the Landfill Directive are met; and

• the site is monitored appropriately.

List of Wastes (England) Regulations 2005

These regulations adopt the European Waste Catalogue (EWC) into the various waste regulations in England. The EWC lists all types of waste and gives each type a six-figure code number.

Hazardous waste entries in the EWC are either:

• ‘absolute entries’ for products classified as hazardous regardless of their concentration; or

• ‘mirror entries’ for products which are hazardous only if present above the certain concentrations specified.

Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992

These regulations make it necessary that, where reasonably possible, pesticides are not handled by people. When lifting, carrying and so on has to be done by hand, a risk assessment must be carried out if there is a risk of injury.

Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER)

Under these regulations, using any mobile work equipment must not result in health and safety problems. Equipment must:

• meet and be maintained to the relevant CE standards;

• be used only for the intended purpose;

• be used only by a trained person; and

• have factory-installed safety features.

Waste Framework Directive 75/442/EEC (amended under EC Directive 91/156/EEC)

Under these directives, waste must be disposed of without causing danger to people or the environment, and waste management must include plans to reduce, reuse and recycle waste.

Waste Management (England and Wales) Regulations 2006

These regulations bring into force the controls specified under the Waste Framework Directive (75/442/EEC as amended) and the Landfill Directive (1999/31/EEC), and places the same controls on agricultural waste as those applying to other waste.

Water Resources Act 1991

Under this Act (which replaced the corresponding law in the Water Act 1989), it is an offence for any person to cause or knowingly allow any poisonous or polluting matter to enter any controlled waters (these include all rivers, lakes, canals, estuaries, coastal waters and underground waters) without the proper authority. This act categorises certain substances as ‘special category effluent’ (the ‘red list’) and approval from the Environment Agency (as well as a trade effluent consent from the local water company) is needed before disposing of these substances into a sewer.