Environment Agency to withdraw RPS 250

The Environment Agency has confirmed that as of the 1^st of September 2023 the withdrawal of Regulatory Position Statement (RPS) 250 will be implemented. This RPS was issued in July 2021 and allowed for potentially hazardous waste wood from construction and demolition to be transported and processed as a non-hazardous material. With its withdrawal, some items from pre-2007 buildings will automatically be classified as hazardous, unless tested to prove otherwise. Therefore, if you do not have evidence that the waste wood is not hazardous or from a post-2007 building, you will not be able to send it to any wood recyclers, such as us at Eco. Instead, the waste wood will have to be disposed of by hazardous waste specialists.

Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of the Wood Recyclers’ Association (WRA), the list of items has been narrowed down to just 10, as follows:

• Barge boards
• External fascia
• Soffit boards
• External joinery
• External doors
• Roof timber
• Tiling cladding
• Tiling battens
• Timber frames
• Timber joists

The WRA have also created a toolkit which includes some helpful quick guides for identifying potentially hazardous wood items. You can access it here.

If you believe your waste wood from construction and demolition is not hazardous, but is from a pre-2007 building, you will need to send a sample of it to an accredited laboratory for testing. If the results come back confirming it is not hazardous, only then can we accept it for recycling here at Eco (as per our updated waste acceptance criteria).

If you have any questions about this process, please feel free to contact us and we would be happy to talk you through it.