Disposing of Waste Safely: the Duty of Care, the Licences and What Can Be Recycled

Waste from a job is your responsibility until it reaches somewhere licensed to take it. If you hand it to the wrong person and it ends up in a lay-by, it is still your offence.

The short answer

For a company vehicle to carry waste legally the operator needs a licence — registration as a waste carrier.

Metals that can be recycled, beyond the galvanised trunking and lead the question hands you: copper pipe, copper cable, low carbon steel, metal conduit and brass.

The piece of legislation the answer guide names is the Site Waste Management Plans Regulations.

About that piece of legislation

Give the guide’s answer, and know the real position underneath it.

The Site Waste Management Plans Regulations applied in England from 2008 and required larger construction projects to plan their waste before work began rather than deal with it once it existed. They were revoked in 2013. The duty that actually governs your working life is the duty of care in the Environmental Protection Act, which falls on anyone who produces, carries, treats or disposes of waste, and it has never gone anywhere.

So: write what the paper wants, and know which one is still in force. The idea behind the plans was a good one regardless — the cheapest time to deal with waste is before the material has been ordered.

The duty of care follows the waste, and it follows the householder

Handing waste to somebody does not hand the responsibility over with it. Pay a man with a van £40 to take a bath and some old pipework away, and if it appears in a lay-by the trail leads back to whoever produced it — usually because something in the pile has an address on it.

Householders are caught by the same principle, which is the part worth passing on to a customer. Somebody who pays a stranger to clear their old bathroom and does not check that they are registered can be issued a fixed penalty of up to £600 in England, or prosecuted. “I paid a man” is not a defence for them any more than it is for you.

Checking a carrier takes about a minute

The register is public and free to search — the Environment Agency in England, SEPA in Scotland, Natural Resources Wales, and the NIEA in Northern Ireland. You need the firm’s name or its registration number, and registration is renewed every few years, so an old certificate on a windscreen proves nothing on its own.

Then record the handover on a waste transfer note: what the waste was, roughly how much, who handed it over, who took it, their carrier registration, and where it was going. Keep it for two years. Hazardous waste travels on its own paperwork, a consignment note, kept for three.

What a strip-out is worth

Scrap metal is the reason nobody has to be talked into separating copper. Clean copper tube is worth a few pounds a kilo, brass rather less, and low carbon steel radiators and pipe are worth a bin rather than a fortune — but between them, the cylinder, the pipework and the rads off a full heating strip-out will often cover the skip and the diesel.

One rule surprises people every time: you cannot be paid in cash. Since the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 a yard has to pay by cheque or bank transfer and has to see photographic identification, which was brought in to make stolen lead and cable harder to sell. Take your driving licence, and expect the yard to write down the vehicle.

Lead is the one to be careful with in an answer. It is valuable and recyclable, and it is hazardous to work with, but clean scrap lead is not hazardous waste: it is kept apart from the copper because it is priced separately. In an exam, note that the qualification’s list puts lead under hazardous waste, so an assessment question may expect that answer.

What comes next

Level 2 goes into the substances themselves: what makes a waste hazardous, how asbestos is identified and who is allowed to touch it, and the assessments that have to happen before you open a container rather than after.