Regulatory Actions of the Week

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EPA Publishes Final RCRA Recycling Rule
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published a final rule that revises the definition of solid waste to exclude certain hazardous secondary materials from regulation under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). EPA published the rule "to respond to a series of seven decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (1987 to 2000), which, taken together, have provided EPA with additional direction regarding the proper formulation of the RCRA regulatory definition of solid wastes for purposes of Subtitle C. A second purpose is to clarify the RCRA concept of ‘legitimate recycling,’ which is a key component of EPA's approach to recycling hazardous secondary materials."

The rule includes the following new provisions:

1) Exclusion for Hazardous Secondary Materials That Are Legitimately Reclaimed Under the Control of the Generator in Non-Land-Based Units;

2) Exclusion for Hazardous Secondary Materials That Are Legitimately Reclaimed Under the Control of the Generator in Land-Based Units;

3) Exclusion for Hazardous Secondary Materials That Are Transferred for the Purpose of Legitimate Reclamation;

4) Codification of the factors to be used in determining whether recycling under the provisions finalized in this rule is legitimate; and

5) A non-waste determination process that provides persons with an administrative process for receiving a formal determination that their hazardous secondary materials are not discarded and, therefore, not solid wastes when legitimately reclaimed.

Click here to read Federal Register notice of new rule