The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is consulting on plans to simplify guidance on environmental regulations for businesses in the waste management sector.
Proposed amendments to guidance documents covering regulations around seven areas including waste exports, batteries and packaging waste were published on Friday (December 20). Stakeholders have been given until February 7 to provide comments on the amended guidance.
Amended guidance has been published for areas including:
- Waste Batteries
- Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
- Packaging and packaging waste
- End of life vehicles (ELVs)
- Hazardous waste
- Exporting and importing waste
- Registration as a waste carrier, dealer or broker.
The proposed new content for the guidance on waste management is being brought in under Defras project titled Smarter Guidance and Data part of the Red Tape Challenge aimed at reducing the burden of regulation on businesses.
Existing guidance is also being moved to the gov.uk website in order to provide businesses with a single source for all relevant regulatory documents.
Guidance
Plans to simplify guidance for businesses required to comply with environmental regulations were originally unveiled in May 2013, when Defra launched a review of regulations in order to provide a simpler reporting process for firms (see letsrecycle.com story).
Defra has outlined a raft of measures aimed at reducing the burden of compliance with waste regulations on businesses, including changes to the requirements around permitting for waste management sites, which are set to be laid in Parliament early in 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Meanwhile, the Department has also proposed to provide greater flexibility over the types of documents that can be used as an alternative to Waste Transfer Notes (WTNs), for businesses who are opting not to use the Electronic Duty of Care (Edoc) tool.
Edoc
Edoc, which will be available to firms from next month, provides an online platform for the completion of WTNs. It seeks to modernise the way waste movements are recorded and reduce the administrative costs for waste producers and handlers.
The tool has been developed over three years by the Environment Agency in partnership with the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM).
In an Edoc bulletin published this month, the Agency said that testing of Edoc had been successful, and urged obligated businesses to use the tool when it is available from January 2014.
Mat Crocker, head of illegals and waste at the Environment Agency, said The intensive user testing cycles enabled participants to view a near complete version of Edoc and perform a series of functional tests designed to assess how well they could carry out specific tasks, such as registering or uploading files to Edoc without any assistance. The tests were designed to ensure that the process was seamless, straightforward and easy to follow from start to finish.
At present the millions of WTNs that are produced each year have to be stored for up to two years, adding up to a huge amount of wasted paper, not to mention the administrative time they cause in terms of filing, storage and retrieval. There is clearly a need to offer a solution to this problem.
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