You must eliminate or otherwise reduce risks of harm from your waste or pollution so far as reasonably practicable.
General environmental duty, section 25, Environment Protection Act 2017.
Who it applies to
Households and businesses – anyone doing any activity that creates a risk to human health and the environment from waste or pollution.
What you must do
Eliminate or otherwise reduce risks of harm from your waste or pollution so far as reasonably practicable.
Following a risk management process will help businesses to manage risk.
Household risks are usually lower than business. However, there can be significant harm from households collectively not meeting the general environment duty. Households do not need to follow a risk management process but can use it as a framework to understand and manage risk.
There are significant penalties if businesses do not meet this duty.
Example
Toula manages a grocery store. The store sells a variety of items, including various types of food.
Toula identifies many different waste streams:
- plastics
- glass
- chemicals
- organic materials
- e-waste
- general landfill waste.
Managing waste is challenging. Toula looks at:
- how the store can avoid generating waste in the first place
- what can be re-used or recycled
- what can be returned to the manufacturers for recycling
- what can be donated to food rescue groups.
Then Toula assesses:
- how waste needs to be separated and stored separately
- how each different waste type needs to be transported and disposed of.
Toula implements a maintenance and cleaning routine. This is to make sure waste storage areas are well-ventilated, cool, dry and away from anything that could start a fire.
She regularly:
- checks the compactor used for crushing cardboard and paper is working properly
- checks how effective the handling and separating of wastes is
- makes changes as needed.
This information is a summary of our guide Implementing the general environmental duty –a guide for licence holders.
Updated