This guide is broken into four sections:
What is the duty of care?
What do I have to do?
How is the duty of care enforced?
Latest developments
What is the duty of care?
As a business, you have a duty to ensure that any waste you produce is handled safely, environmentally soundly and in accordance with the law This is the ‘Duty of Care’ and it applies to anyone who produces, imports, carries, keeps, treats or disposes of controlled waste from business or industry or acts as a waste broker in this respect.
What do I have to do?
You and/or your business have a ‘duty’ to take all reasonable measures when you pass waste on (transfer) to somebody else:
- Ensure that the waste being transferred is accompanied by a transfer note and a written description that will enable anyone receiving it to dispose of it or handle it in accordance with his or her own Duty of Care. The written description must make reference to the appropriate European Waste Catalogue (EWC) code or List of Waste (LOW) code. This note may be required to demonstrate that the waste has been managed properly and is your evidence when asked by an authorised officer.
- Stop materials escaping from your control or the control of anyone else by packaging it appropriately and robustly. The containers must be suitable to correctly hold the waste, e.g. do not place loose powder waste materials in an open builders skip as they are likely to blow away. Such materials should be securely bagged.
- Ensure that waste is only transferred to an authorised person. Make sure that a person or business is authorised to deal with your particular type of waste. Any company who picks up your waste should be a Registered Waste Carrier and have a certificate to prove this. If you deliver your own waste to a disposal or recycling facility they should be licensed, permitted or exempted from licensing.
- Undertake a reasonable amount of checks in order to prevent anyone keeping, depositing, disposing of or recovering your ‘controlled waste’ without a waste management licence or an exemption from the need for a licence. As a reasonable step you should ask for a copy of the Carriers Certificate, Waste Management License / Permit or license exemption.
You must make sure that anyone that you pass your waste on to, such as a waste contractor, scrap metal merchant, recycler, local council or skip hire company, is authorised to take it. If you don’t, and your waste is illegally disposed of, you could be held responsible.
The Duty of Care has no time limit, and extends until the waste has either been finally and properly disposed of or fully recovered.
If your waste is hazardous or dangerous goods there are other more stringent controls which you must follow.
How is the duty of care enforced?
The Duty of Care is supposed to be a self regulation system of controls but under new powers in the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 the Environment Agency and Local Authorities will be able to hand out fixed penalty notices for failure to produce duty of care documentation or transfer notes.
Latest developments
The duty of care system is currently under review. The aim of the review is to modernise the regulation in accordance with better regulations principles. The government’s first consultation on this closed on 6 March 2007 (see our submission to government). A further consultation on draft amendments to the regulation is expected this autumn.
DEFRA have published a Code of Practice outlining the requirements of the Duty of Care.