The Haz Guide

Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) has been defined by the National Household Hazardous Waste Forum (NHHWF) as “any material discarded by a household, which is difficult to dispose of, or which puts human health or the environment at risk because of its chemical or biological nature.”
With regard to businesses, HH type waste is “any material that is produced and discarded by a business that is of a similar quantity and nature to that produced by a household, which is difficult to dispose of, or which puts human health or the environment at risk because of its chemical or biological nature.”
The NHHWF has developed a detailed list of HH type materials that encompasses all wastes that are listed as hazardous under the municipal waste classification of the European Waste Catalogue (EWC), and others that are included as “problematic wastes”. The HH type waste list is divided into the following categories:

The full list of products and substances, together with information on the hazards presented by different materials, can be accessed via this link.

The NHHWF definition of household and household type waste encompasses all the “domestic” products falling under the legal definition of hazardous waste, and other “problematic wastes”. All wastes that are listed as such under the EWC are hazardous. The EWC is transposed in England by the List of Wastes Regulations (England) 2005 and by equivalent legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All items defined as hazardous under the List of Wastes Regulations are subject to control under the Hazardous Waste Regulations (2005). For further information see the legislation section.

In the good practice options section, information is arranged according to the categories of material that are likely to be separately presented by members of the public at HWRCs and require separate treatment and management. It is advisable that WDAs have facilities to deal with all these categories of hazardous waste at one or more sites in a waste disposal authority area. One of these sites should be accessible to small producers of commercial waste, whereby it would be prohibitively expensive to engage a waste management company to collect and manage the material.

The hazardous waste categories used in this guidance are shown in the table below. The table is sub-divided according to whether some or all of the items in each category are defined as hazardous under the EWC. Wastes that are not listed as hazardous in the EWC, but fall under the NHHWF definition (they are potentially difficult to manage or dispose of), are referred to as “other problematic wastes”. The links in the table below provide access to good practice guidance for the collection and storage of the different categories of waste. These categories are appropriate regardless of who (a household or business) has produced the waste.

Note that the public should not be encouraged to bring explosive materials or clinical waste to HWRCs, as these are not the most suitable sites for management of these waste types. However, these items are sometimes brought to HWRCs, and the guidance provides brief details of good practice in these cases.

The majority of the categories outlined above are self-explanatory. However, a number of the broader categories require some explanation:

Cleaning products and garden chemicals:

This category includes a wide range of typical household cleaning products including bleaches, detergents, disinfectants and surface cleaners, as well as garden chemicals including pesticides, weedkillers, fertilisers and lawn treatments.

Motoring products:

This category includes antifreeze, brake fluid, diesel, petrol, rust remover and transmission fluid. Many of these motoring products are flammable and will need to be stored in a designated flammable materials container. Some motoring products are listed as separate categories because they are separately collected and managed (e.g. automotive batteries, oil and oil filters and tyres).

Paints and related DIY products:

This category includes both hazardous materials and those which, although non-hazardous, have the potential to cause mess, contamination or nuisance.

Hazardous paints are generally specialist, industrial or commercial paints that are marked as hazardous but are unlikely to be brought to an HWRC by a member of the public. They may however be generated by a business, best practice advice is provided here. Many solvent-based paint strippers, paint thinners and wood preservatives are also hazardous.

Most domestic paints are non-hazardous, but should be collected separately and reused or disposed of in order to avoid mess or nuisance (e.g. contamination of other wastes, and/or collection vehicles). For further information on paint reuse and identification of hazardous paints, see the Community RePaint case study.