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Waste Protocols
The Waste Protocols Project is a joint initiative by the Environment Agency and WRAP to reduce the red tape associated with recycling and recovering certain waste materials. A waste protocol (also known as a quality protocol) clearly sets out the steps that must be taken for a selected waste stream to become a non-waste product or material that can be either reused by business or industry, or supplied into other markets, enabling recovered products to be used without the need for waste regulation controls. ESA participates in the project as a member of the advisory board that provides guidance to the delivery team.
Benefits
The protocols help waste that has been suitably processed to be categorised and marketed as a product rather than a waste, allowing these materials to compete more easily with primary products without the stigma of being categorised as waste.
A waste protocol sets out:
- how specific wastes need to be processed in order to be treated as a product from a regulatory perspective
- how to demonstrate compliance
- best practice for use of the recovered product.
If materials gain product status, they are no longer subject to waste controls for their management, storage, transport and use, and producers, handlers and consumers will be confident that they have been recovered in a way which does not compromise human health and the environment.
In addition, there has been some uncertainty over the point at which waste is fully recovered and ceases to be waste. The protocols aim to create more certainty and encourage greater investment in the recycling sector.
Objective
For each of the selected materials, the aim is to achieve one of the following outcomes:
- to produce a Quality Protocol defining the point at which waste may become a non-waste product or material that can be either used by business or industry, or supplied into other markets, enabling recovered products to be used without the need for waste regulation controls, or
- to produce a regulatory position statement that confirms to the business community what legal obligations they must comply with to use the treated waste material. In this instance, the material in question remains a waste and will be subject to associated regulatory requirements, such as waste permitting and carriage of waste.
Materials
The first protocol, the compost quality protocol, was launched in March 2007 and contains parameters for the full recovery of compost and its use for agricultural and other purposes. Additional protocols are at varying stages of development. Further protocols have been published for:
flat glass
biodiesel from waste cooking oil and tallow
waste lubricating oil
non-packaging plastics, and
anaerobic digestate.
Protocols have been issued in draft, and are nearing formal publication, for tyre-derived rubber material and gypsum.
Additional materials for which protocols are anticipated include:
Pulverised Fuel Ash and Furnace Bottom Ash
Incinerator Bottom Ash
Steel Slag
Paper Sludge Ash
Marine Dredged Aggregates.
The selected materials are subject to assessment of their suitability for non-waste status, an assessment which is overseen by Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs). TAG membership typically comprises the Environment Agency, WRAP and relevant stakeholders, such as trade associations and other similar bodies. The assessment for each material normally includes a financial impact assessment, a risk assessment and a technical report, which are made publicly available.
The draft protocols are also submitted to the European Commission under the Technical Standards Directive for a statutory six-month period, before being formally published.
The protocols project continues into 2009/2010 with the selection of four additional waste streams for protocol development: compressed tyre bales, treated ash from the incineration of poultry litter, feathers and straw, cathode ray tube glass, and non-virgin wood.
Further information on protocols which are subject to public consultation can be found at http://qp.dialoguebydesign.net/default.asp. More general information can be found on the Environment Agency website, under Waste.
September 2009
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