Hazardous waste


Sorting out paper trails and legislation


From lead acid batteries to oil and from fluorescent tubes to asbestos, the term ‘hazardous waste’ covers a multitude of sins. But who should businesses turn to for help when it comes to the disposal of such items? Joe Morris speaks to specialists who offer one-stop solutions.


Joe Morris Freelance Writer


W


HEN VEOLIA wanted to expand its UK business back in the halcyon days of 2006, it was forced to sell off its high temperature hazardous


waste incinerator in Fawley. Why? Because an intended acquisition


of Cleanaway UK would have put the multinational utility titan in ownership of the only other equivalent facility in the country, which, perhaps understandably, was a commercial situation the European Commission saw as a potential monopoly. Half a decade on and the UK still only


boasts a lonely pair of merchant hazardous waste incinerators. One is in Fawley, Hampshire, while the


other lies hundreds of miles further north in Ellesmere Port, near Chester. Given the much larger and steadily


increasing total of similar installations geared towards other types of waste, the relative scarcity of relevant facilities might lead a casual observer to think that hazardous waste management is a fairly small scale concern in this country. Leaving aside Defra’s own hazardous waste


consultation that has this year set out ‘the strategic need and justification of government policy for the provision of nationally significant infrastructure projects for hazardous waste’ and the fact that hazardous waste is of course disposed of by other methods too – the view above has a kernel of truth to it. Insiders will tell you that it is a close-knit


industry, where contracts are often won more by good old-fashioned word-of-mouth than by PR and marketing campaigns. Compared with the vast volumes produced by the country as a whole, hazardous waste does make up only a few percentage of the total.


From damaging to positively deadly But that still adds up to several millions of tonnes of material, covering a bewildering array of items that range between the merely damaging and the positively deadly; from lead acid batteries, oil and fluorescent tubes to asbestos. Unpleasant though it may be, such waste is


an inevitable by-product of modern, high tech civilisation. And all the same principles that have made waste management an increasingly complex and specialist endeavour in recent years apply to the nasty stuff; only more so. For sound reasons that are too clear to


spell out, disposing of hazardous waste means dealing with a lot of paperwork. Not only that, but that paperwork is


changing all the time. If anything, when it comes to hazardous waste, the legislative conveyor belt moves forward with even greater speed than that experienced by other sectors of the industry. And, with higher stakes for society at large in cases of error or wilful transgression, the financial penalties tend to be greater too.


6 November 24 2011 Not to mention the potentially catastrophic


damage to a company’s reputation. All this adds up to a minefield for any producers of hazardous waste, so anything that can help keep the system ticking over successfully is a welcome respite. After soberly assessing the unappealing


prospect of going it alone, many organisations who produce hazardous waste turn to a specialist such as Windsor Waste Management. Among other related services, this independent business based in Rainham, Essex, offers clients a ‘total waste management’ solution for hazardous waste. This approach means that the potential


customer can outsource all the increasingly labyrinthine legislative and technical challenges to trained professionals. Rather than running the gauntlet of inadvertent non-compliance on their own, they can deal with a single point of contact that will take responsibility for everything, from classifying waste streams and arranging collections, to managing the extensive documentation needed for the upkeep of audit trails. This ‘total waste management’ allows for an individually tailored approach, which is vital given the sheer variety of different materials that make up hazardous waste arisings.


Research and development Recent advances in communication and data processing technology have proven an invaluable ally in the quest to make this kind of joined-up approach to hazardous waste management possible. Waste management technology specialists, AMCS say they are at the forefront of an ongoing frenzy of research and development in this area.


While their comprehensive suite of software, hardware and integrated solutions are used across the industry, they say their tailored solutions for the uniquely demanding world of hazardous waste are critical to their end- users, with control being the watchword, as the AMCS’s John Shiveral tells RWW. “We provide what we like to term ‘end to


end solutions’ for our customers, and that includes our specialised hazardous waste offerings. With rapidly changing legislation and paper trails placing constant demands on hazardous waste management organisation, improving control is more important here than perhaps any other sector of the industry. “As an example, paperwork is especially


prone to human error, and with hazardous waste the consequences of getting it wrong are particularly severe. With our system, instead of paperwork, the driver has a handheld electronic device that can record all the key data electronically and handle consignment notes and so on. The chances of the system going wrong are just that much less.” With development costs driven down by


an explosion in consumer markets over the last decade, the miniaturised semiconductor technology used in handheld devices and the software that integrates such systems with back office are already helping keep hazardous waste manageable in ways that could never have been dreamt of in former times. But AMCS says they have a still more


ambitious vision in mind, of a near future in which their radio-frequency identification technology, currently being used to tag bins, is opened up to a wider range of applications that “could have interesting implications for


the hazardous waste processing of tomorrow”. Shiveral again: “The cost of RFID tags is continually coming down. This means we are reaching the point where a whole new range of applications is opening up which is very exciting. In the not-too-distant future, we anticipate being able to replace bar codes on hazardous waste with RFID tags, for instance, at a price point where they can even be disposable.”


Registration of waste drums There was once no alternative to the laborious manual registration of hazardous waste drums. Since the 1970s, the dangerously error-prone practice has steadily been replaced with the use of barcodes that can be scanned at close range by a human operator, and the data automatically recorded. However, this still leaves some margin for


error. For example, drums can be missed on their way through a high throughput facility. AMCS may soon have the answer, predicts Shiveral. “One of the most compelling reasons for


using tags in this way is, again, control. You don’t need an operator right up against the barcode any more. The ultra high frequency RFID tags in particular have a range of several metres, which means that even if a worker places the tag at the furthest point of the drum, a computer can detect whether the item should be permitted to proceed on a conveyor to the incinerator, for example. “This helps reduce the possibility of


human error. People do a very good job under difficult circumstances, but they are never infallible and mistakes do inevitably get made,” adds Shiveral.


RWW


When it comes to hazardous waste, there are higher stakes for society at large in cases of error or wilful transgression and the financial penalties tend to be greater too Recycling


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