In an announcement this morning, 27 May, the Agency said that the RPS 207 deadline will be pushed back five months to 31 January 2021, to allow the industry to “write a code of practise which meets the legal requirements for assessing and classifying waste wood”, and “comply with that code of practice”.
Testing
The Environment Agency first issued RPS 207 in Autumn 2017, which meant that those handling waste wood could continue with current practise, giving time to the Wood Recyclers Association and their working group to complete its investigation into hazardous waste wood arisings.
This came after the European Commission had asked the UK to examine why approximately 0.2% of its waste wood was classified as hazardous, while in Germany, by comparison, it is 15% (see letsrecycle.com story)
Under the RPS waste wood from mixed sources must be destined for IED Chapter IV compliant boilers and the board manufacturing industry; the right end use for chemically treated waste wood. This was to be the case while testing was carried out.
Project
The testing of wood is being led by the Wood Recyclers Association under the Waste Wood Classification (WWC) project.
Mass testing has been taking place since 2017 to determine which types of material could be hazardous, but the Wood Recyclers Association, says the current pandemic has led to delays in the project’s completion
Julia Turner, executive director for the WRA, said: “We’re naturally relieved that the RPS has been extended as, due to the current lockdown situation, we are unable to source the remaining waste wood samples needed to complete the testing from HWRCs and demolition sites.
“To date we have carried out testing on 193 samples of fence posts and decking and only 12 of those returned some hazardous content, which equates to less than 0.1% of household waste wood sources. We are aiming to test around 250 samples of this material in total.
“We have tested 92 samples of waste wood from the demolition sector, and only eight of those were found to be hazardous which is around 8.5%. This was lower than we anticipated for that particular sector so further testing is required to give us a clearer picture.”
RPS
After the 2021 deadline, the agency says all unassessed waste wood must be classified has hazardous.
This is the third time the RPS has been delayed, initially set to finish in September 2018.
Subscribe for free