Materials Facilities regulations

The Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 come into force on 1 October 2024 implementing the new waste sampling and reporting requirements for Material Recycling Facilities.

GOV.UK guidance gives a detailed explanation as to what type of facility and waste is in scope, but in essence, it only applies to sites:

Operating under an Environmental Permit, NOT sites operating under Exemptions.
Receiving more that 1000 tpa of the qualifying waste material.
That consolidate incoming household – or commercial/industrial waste similar to household waste in nature and composition – single or multiple stream waste from single or multiple suppliers into sorted output materials eg plastic, cans etc.

However, reprocessing sites that perform some separation of incoming material to be sent elsewhere are also likely to be in scope. This is explained in a Q&A response from Defra along with answers to many other questions raised on a webinar.

Facilities unlikely to fall within scope include:

Sites that accept waste that is not similar to household eg wood, chemicals, scrap metal.
Sites sorting ONLY residual waste eg MBT plants, RDF sites
Sites only sorting construction and demolition waste, WEEE and batteries.
Sites that recycle the waste they receive eg plastics extrusion site, paper mill etc.

Effectively, therefore, this includes all the following in England and Wales:

All transfer stations that for instance, extract the cardboard and plastic from skip waste.
All MRFs.
All PRFs – plastics sorting facilities.

Facilities that are in scope have to complete new Quarterly Returns – starting end Q4 2024 – that combine their existing permit reporting requirements with the sampling data required under these regulations.

Sampling is required on both input and output materials. The Guidance explains this oin detail but in brief:

An input sample must be taken from every 75 tonnes from each supplier.
The sample must have a minimum weight of 55kg with an average weight of 60kgs across all samples.
All input samples must be measured to identify whether target, non-target or non-recyclable materials.
For each of these, the operator must identify and measure the proportions of each of the following materials in each of the samples:

glass
aluminium
steel
paper
card
plastic bottles
plastic pots, tubs and trays
film or other flexible plastic
other plastic
fibre-based composite material

The operator must also identify packaging and separately, drinks containers.

It is unclear how many sites this will affect. The EA believe it is around 200, the waste industry believe it is closer to 1200 and that is just in England. It is also unclear how this will be enforced and whether the reglators will adopt a light-touch transition period or start enforcement from the first quarterly returns. But for thiose that are affected, this will have a significant and challenging impact.

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