Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

From October 2024 these new regulations will bring more waste facilities under the scope of the Material Facility (MF) regulations than previously. The amended regulations bring into scope facilities which receive single waste streams and facilities whcih consolidate waste material into bulk quantities. the regulations place the onus on the operator of the site to self-assess whether their facility is a MF under the regulations.

Which material facilites are in scope

A facility (or part of a facility) may be classed as a MF if you:

• hold a permit under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016
• receive and handle waste classed as waste material
• consolidate waste material into bulk quantities from multiple suppliers - for example, bulking or transfer stations
• sort incoming waste material into specified output materials, such as aluminium cans or cardboard

A facility (or part of a facility) will not be considered a MF if:

• it only receives waste material from a single supplier and does not seperate the material into specified out put materials
• It is a HWRC
• it solely undertakes the processing or sorting of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), waste batteries or accumulators.
• it solely undertakes the processing and sorting of residual waste.

Examples of materials facilites

Facilities likely to be considered MFs include

• materials recovery facilities (MRFs) sorting household dry recyclables
• Commercial and Industrial Waste facilities that receive waste material to consolidate or sort into specified output materials
• Waste Transfer Stations (WTS) that receive waste material to consolidate or sort into specified output materials
• facilites receiving and sorting single streams such as paper and cardboard
• facilities consolidating waste material received from 2 or more suppliers into bulk outputs

Facilites not likely to be considered MFs include:

• commercial and industrial MRFs that consolidate and sort commercial and industrial wastes, unless the commercial waste meets the definition of waste material
• MRFs or parts of MRFs sorting only residual waste (‘dirty’ MRFs)
• mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facilities, unless they accept material that meets the definition of waste material and undertake MRF operations on part of the site
• refuse derived fuel (RDF) including solid recovered fuel (SRF) production facilities
• MRFs sorting materials from Construction and Demolition Waste

What counts as waste material

The material received is likely to be considered waste under the regulations if it meets the following criteria:

• it’s from a household source or it’s from a non-household source and is similar to household waste in nature or composition
• it was separately collected for the primary purpose of preparing for reuse or recycling
• it’s a single kind of material (a single stream) or multiple materials mixed together (a multiple stream)
• it contains one or more material types including glass, metal, paper, card, plastic, or fibre-based composite materials

Assessing whether you are a materials facility

You are probably operating a MF under the regulations if:

• you receive waste material which is:
  • prepared for recycling or reuse
  • includes sorting the waste material into specified output materials suppliers into commom bulked quantities.

You are not a MF if:

• only consolidate waste material from a single supplier into bulked outputs
• do not prepare the material for reuse or recycing

Input sampling, measuring and recording

As a MF receiving 1,000 tonnes or more of waste material in 12 months and you meet the criteria above as a facility within the scope of the new regulations then sampling, measurement and recording of information by each individual supplier must be undertaken.

This involves measuring and recording the following:

• the total weight in tonnes of input waste material for each supplier during each reporting period
• the name and address of the supplier (or of each supplier) for each batch of material
• the date on which the batch of material was received, from which a sample has been taken

for input sampling the following information must be taken and recorded for each input sample:

• its composition in relation to the input sampling categories
• details of each supplier from whose inputs the sample was taken
• total weight in kilograms of each sample
• date the sample was taken
• details of the sampling methodology used to take a representative sample

In addition to measuring and recording the above, you alos need to report:

• the total number of samples taken for each supplier
• the total weight of all samples