New regulations affect all companies transporting their own waste

If you normally and regularly transport your own waste, you now need to register as a waste carrier.

From January 2014, waste producers that normally and regularly transport their own wastes must register as a waste carrier.

The more headline-grabbing ones were the introduction of a legal requirement to implement the Waste Hierarchy and the creation of a new class of hazard, H13 Sensitising, to take account of when classifying waste as hazardous or not.

Transitional exemptions have so far meant that affected businesses have been able to avoid registering, but these transitional arrangements expire at the end of December 2013.

Moves like this have enabled retailers to reduce the infrastructure costs of recycling equipment (like balers and compactors) at every store location, whilst also benefiting from transport efficiencies and scale economies. From 1 January 2014, retailers and other affected businesses that are not appropriately registered will be committing an offence if they transport their own wastes.