A comprehensive, evidence-based application is required to enable the Environmental Protection Agency to fully understand:
The following information is intended to ensure that you are fully informed in terms of what is required to make your application. For further details, refer to Submitting an End-of-Waste Application and Next Steps for information on how to submit your application.
The main part of any end-of-waste application is demonstrating that you can meet the requirements of the four ‘pillars’ of the end-of-waste test. An overview of the pillars and the information that you need to provide to demonstrate that your material complies with these pillars are summarised below:
Applicants shall propose end-of-waste criteria that take into account possible overall adverse environmental effects of the substance or object when compared to equivalent virgin product and include concentration limit values for pollutants where necessary. It is likely that applicants will need to carry out a human health and environmental risk assessment to address the requirements of this ‘pillar’ and to establish the required end-of-waste criteria.
Draft End-of-Waste - Guidance Document Part 2 provides guidance to undertake a 3-tier risk assessment using the source-pathway-receptor approach. This is supported by conceptual models for each intended end use of your material to help you to identify pollutant linkages (pathways) from the source to all receptors (air, water, soil and living organisms). For many end-of-waste assessments, the initial (tier 1) screening risk assessment and generic quantitative risk assessment (tier 2) is likely to be sufficient. It may however be necessary to progress to a tier 3 risk assessment in more complex situations where the tier 2 assessment cannot establish that there is no significant risk.
Undertaking a risk assessment can be a complicated process requiring expert knowledge and you might decide to use a suitably qualified advisor.
In addition to demonstrating that you meet the four ‘pillars’, you will be asked to give some background information on your business. This is to help the Environmental Protection Agency to understand the context for your application, including the nature of your business, your rationale for seeking an end-of-waste decision and the overall activities undertaken from which the fully recovered material is derived.
When you have completed the full assessment, you can then compile your end-of-waste criteria. These can include, for example, controls over sources and/or types of waste inputs; a specified recovery process; ‘product’ concentration limits; and detailed ‘product’ use scenarios and limitations.
The Environmental Protection Agency has produced the following detailed guidance, divided into part 1 and part 2, to help applicants complete their end-of-waste applications:
It is important applicants read both parts and are familiar with the background and context of end-of-waste. If you have read the guidance but you still have a question about making an end-of-waste application, please email article28@epa.ie with a summary of your question. In complex cases, you may request a pre-application discussion with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The following general reference sources on end-of-waste may support you further in completing your application:
European Commission website, Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (Waste Framework Directive).
European Commission website, Waste Framework Directive, end-of-waste criteria.
“Guidance on the interpretation of key provisions of Directive 2008/98/EC on waste”, European Commission Directorate-General Environment, June 2012 (not legally binding).
“End-of-Waste Criteria”, Final Report, European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, 2009 (“JRC report”).
“Guidance on the legal definition of waste and its application”, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), August 2012.
“Study on the selection of waste streams for End of Waste assessment”, Final Report, European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, 2009.
You may find it helpful to consider previous end-of-waste decisions made by the Environmental Protection Agency, see End-of-Waste Decisions in Ireland.