CONFUSION OVER the removal of waste wood rule RPS 250 means that some waste processors are charging more than necessary to take waste wood from home refurbishments.

In some cases processors have stopped taking it altogether, according to the Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA).

The WRA is highlighting how the regulatory change only impacts a very small amount of material which through testing can be reduced even further and should not cause major disruption to operations.

Waste Wood Rule

According to the WRA, householders who are responsible for their own renovation waste wood are not impacted by the regulatory change and can continue to take material to their local household waste recycling centres as normal.

However, if they use a contractor to handle renovation wood waste then these contractors must update their procedures and protocols following the removal of the RPS 250 on 1st September, 2023.

This means the contractors can no longer move and process ten ‘amber’ waste wood items as non-hazardous which the RPS previously permitted. Instead, these items must be identified and consigned as hazardous, unless contractors obtain testing to certify they are not hazardous.

The ten potentially hazardous waste wood items from demolition are: barge boards; external fascia; soffit boards; external joinery; external doors; roof timber; tiling cladding; tiling battens; timber frames and timber joists.

Send Samples for Testing

The Association has been pushing to reduce this list even further and is urging businesses to send samples off for testing and feed those results back to the WRA. This will allow the WRA to put the case to the Environment Agency that some, or all of these items are still non-hazardous and therefore can be removed from the list.

The WRA has emphasised that the change only relates to a very small quantity of wood with invisible treatments from buildings built between 1950 and 2007 and does not include painted wood or that with obvious hazardous treatments like creosote.

“We are talking about a very small quantity of material from a very specific time frame, which is quite hard to find”, explains Vicki Hughes, Technical Lead on the WRA Board.

“We understand that some processors are getting confused about how much is involved and are charging excessive additional costs for disposal or testing.

“We are concerned that this could lead to good wood being sent needlessly for hazardous waste disposal and artificially inflate the UK’s hazardous waste wood figures.”

The WRA has been feeding its concerns back to the Environment Agency and has been having constructive discussions to ensure compliance, whilst maintaining a practical and measured response to the changes.

To help businesses to navigate this change, there are a wide range of resources on the WRA website, contained within a special Toolkit for the Withdrawal of RPS 250.

Vicki added: “If you have any questions about the changes and what they mean for you, please contact us directly to ensure minimal disruption and unnecessary costs during this time.

“We’ve been helping members, trade associations, in fact anyone that has contacted us because for us the preservation of the waste wood stream is vital to the overall waste hierarchy and to maintaining the recycling and recovery rates across the UK.”

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