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How Many Wastes Is That?
There are numerous challenges retailers face when trying to manage hazardous waste (hazwaste). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified 13 retail sectors (e.g., vehicle service stations, electronics and appliance stores, and food and beverage stores) comprising 1.6 million facilities that generate hazwaste. According to the EPA, only about 41,000 facilities (4.6 percent) of this total are registered as hazwaste generators in the Agency’s RCRAInfo database.
It is likely that many retailers that do not view themselves as hazwaste generators may be subject to regulation. For example, retailers may not be aware that products returned to them by customers may be Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) hazwaste. Retailers manage a wide range of retail products that may become wastes if unsold, returned, or removed from shelves for inventory changes.
Also, hazwaste 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 hazwaste determinations.
Common retail hazwastes include:
- Batteries
- Aerosol cans
- Hazwaste pharmaceuticals
- Pesticides
- Household cleaners
- Lightbulbs
- Pool chemicals
- Paints and varnishes
- Personal consumer products, such as mouthwash, hair spray, or nail polish
You get the picture.
Join us on Wednesday, September 30, for our in-depth webinar, New Hazardous Waste Generators Rule: The Practical Impact of the EPA’s Push to Strengthen Environmental Protections
Reverse Distribution—Whose Waste Is It?
Retailers often conduct reverse distribution, also known as reverse logistics, whereby 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 the identity of the generator if the product contains hazwaste: Is it the retailer or the reverse distribution center?
The EPA has not been clear about this. In 2013, for example, a major retailer paid millions of dollars in fines, in part, for its failure to properly manage damaged and returned items as hazwaste. The retailer sent all such items from its retail stores to reverse distribution centers.
Here’s What Happened
The company annually disposed of a significant quantity of consumer products as hazwaste when the products were damaged or returned and could not be sold, recycled, or donated.
Surprisingly, until the mid-2010s, the company did not have a hazwaste management program and failed to train its employees on proper hazwaste management and disposal practices at the store level. As a result, hazwastes were either discarded improperly at the store level—including being put into municipal trash bins or, if a liquid, poured into the local sewer system—or were improperly transported without proper safety documentation to one of six reverse distribution centers located throughout the country.
The company’s failure to properly manage damaged and returned items from its retail stores as hazwaste resulted in the following RCRA violations at hundreds of stores:
- Failure to make a hazwaste determination;
- Failure to prepare a hazwaste manifest;
- Offering hazwaste to unpermitted treatment, storage, and disposal facilities; and
- Failure to meet hazwaste handling, storage, and emergency response requirements.
On August 31, the EPA released a proposed rule to update the hazardous waste generator regulations. Click here to learn more!
Moving Forward or Stalled?
In early 2014, the EPA invited public comment on issues specific to retail hazwaste in anticipation of a policy that would ease the regulatory burden for the retail sector. However, with the two recently proposed rules, one for managing hazwaste pharmaceuticals and the other for making improvements to the hazwaste generator rules, the EPA closed down its efforts specific to the retail sector on the idea that many of the retail issues were covered in these proposals. The Agency left open the possibility of looking into the retail sector at a future date.