Who can deal with your waste
You must ensure that anyone who handles your waste has the correct permit, registration or exemption.
Your transporter of waste has to be registered with SEPA or NIEA; and anyone who recycles, treats, stores, reprocesses or disposes of your waste must have:
- either a waste management licence or pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit,
- or a registered exemption from waste management licensing for your type of waste and what they do with it.
Make sure your waste carrier is registered
Anyone who collects and transports your waste must be either:
- a registered carrier of controlled waste
- exempt from registration as a waste carrier
- in Scotland, on the register of professional collectors and transporters of waste
This will include your local council's waste collectors of waste.
People who may be authorised to collect your waste include:
- waste contractors
- scrap metal merchants
- recycling businesses
- your local council
- skip hire businesses
You must check that your waste carrier is registered or holds an exemption. You need to keep evidence of this so you can prove you have checked if necessary.
Ask to see your waste carrier's certificate of registration or a certified copy of it, which will show when their registration expires. Photocopies do not provide evidence of registration. You can take a photocopy of the certificate for your own records, date it and write on it that you have seen the original. In Scotland, authorised credit card sized copies of the certificate are also acceptable proof of registration.
In Scotland, certain types of organisation and carriers of certain waste types, such as animal by-products waste, mines and quarry wastes, and agricultural waste, are exempt from waste carrier registration but still need to go on a register of professional collectors and transporters of waste. They won't have a certificate, but they should still be able to provide proof of registration in the form of a letter confirming their registration.
SEPA: Online applications for registration as professional collector or transporter of waste, and for waste carrier
If you transport your own waste
In Northern Ireland, if you only transport waste produced by your own business, you do so normally and regularly, and that waste is not construction or demolition waste, you must be registered with the NIEA as Lower Tier Carrier of controlled waste; registration is free. If you transport your business waste but that is construction and demolition waste, you must be registered with the NIEA as Upper Tier.
In Scotland, if you normally and regularly transport waste produced by your own business, you must register with SEPA as a professional collector or transporter of waste. If you transport your own construction or demolition waste you must usually register as a waste carrier instead. Register online.
Further information
- NetRegs: Duty of Care for waste (Scotland) leaflet (PDF - 997KB)
- NIEA: Waste duty of care – a code of practice
- NIEA: Waste duty of care - a short guide
- Scottish Government: Duty of care - a code of practice