The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced its strategy to “ease the burden of managing hazardous wastes in a retail setting.” But, how helpful will these actions be for retailers faced with numerous and varied hazardous wastes and the convoluted regulations surrounding the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)? Let’s take a look and then you be the judge.
 |
What Retailers Are Up Against
There are numerous challenges retailers face when trying to manage hazardous waste. The EPA has identified 13 retail sectors (e.g., vehicle service stations, electronics and appliance stores, food and beverage stores) comprising 1.6 million facilities that generate hazardous waste.
It is likely that a great many retailers do not view themselves as hazardous waste generators who may be subject to regulation. For example, retailers may not be aware that products returned to them by customers may be RCRA hazardous waste. Retailers manage a wide range of retail products that may become wastes if unsold, returned, or removed from shelves for inventory changes.
Also, hazardous waste generation rates at retail facilities can vary depending on product recalls, customer returns, expiration dates, accidental product spills or breakage, seasonality, and “consumer” midnight dumping in retail parking lots.
A single retail store can sell hundreds or thousands of products. These products come from tens of thousands of suppliers and manufacturers, most of which do not provide the retailer with the data needed to make hazardous waste determinations.
Common retail hazardous wastes include:
- Batteries
- Aerosol cans
- Hazardous waste pharmaceuticals
- Pesticides
- Household cleaners
- Lightbulbs
- Pool chemicals
- Paints and varnishes
- Personal consumer products, such as mouthwash, hair spray, and nail polish
In addition, retailers are burdened by the confusion surrounding reverse distribution—i.e., whose waste is it? Here’s the conundrum:
The retail store ships nondamaged products to consolidation centers where decisions are made about their final disposition. If it is determined that further use of the product is impractical and it is to be discarded, there is confusion about who the generator is if the product contains hazardous waste—the retailer or the reverse distribution center.
EPA’s New Strategy
EPA’s strategy to help retailers navigate the hazardous waste maze includes five steps:
- Issuing the final hazardous waste generator rule in fall 2016—at this writing still pending;
- Working on finalizing the hazardous waste pharmaceuticals rule;
- Issuing a guide on recycling aerosol cans;
- Proposing a universal waste rule for aerosol cans; and
- Issuing a policy on reverse distribution and RCRA.
‘Done that!’
Two components of EPA’s strategy include an “already done that” approach.
In early 2014, the EPA invited public comment on issues specific to retail hazardous waste in the anticipation of a possibility that would ease the regulatory burden for the retail sector. However, with the two proposed rules, one for managing hazardous waste pharmaceuticals and the other for making improvements to the hazardous waste generator rules, the EPA closed down its efforts specific to the retail sector on the thinking that many of the retail issues are covered in these proposals.
The Agency did leave open the possibility of looking into the retail sector at a future date—and that’s what this new strategy is about.
In addition to the “relief” the EPA is claiming retailers will see under the hazardous waste generator improvement rule and the hazardous waste pharmaceuticals rule, the new retail RCRA strategy also suggests that retailers avail themselves of the January 2015 Definition of Solid Waste (DSW) rule for hazardous secondary materials. Under the DSW, if these materials are managed according to specific conditions, legitimately recycled and sent to a verified recycler, they would not be regulated as a solid waste. The EPA suggests that retailers may be able to use this exclusion for recycling aerosol cans and possibly other retail items.
Tomorrow we will take a look at what this new strategy means for the management of aerosol cans and what the EPA plans to do about the thorny issue of reverse distribution.