Environmental guidance for your business in Northern Ireland & Scotland
Waste activities
If you carry out waste disposal or recovery activities you should check whether your activity is a listed activity.
Listed activities are explained in our guidance on PPC permits.
If your waste disposal or recovery activities are not listed activities then they may be a waste management activity.
Waste management activities include operating:
- landfill sites for inert waste
- waste transfer stations, eg collection points and civic amenity sites
- waste treatment plants, eg composting and anaerobic digestion
- scrap metal sites.
What you must do
If you carry out waste operations or waste management activities you must have a waste management licence from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) or SEPA in Scotland.
How to apply for a permit or licence
To find out how to apply for a permit or licence see our guidance on waste management licensing.
How do you apply for a waste management licence
The NIEA and SEPA have also prepared a generic toolkit available for all businesses in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
You can use the generic toolkit designed for each country to help you structure a management plan to control your business' environmental impacts.
For further information, see our guidance on toolkits to help you manage your environmental performance.
Northern Ireland environmental management toolkit
Scotland environmental management toolkit
Further information on waste activities
NIEA: Waste management licensing
SEPA: Waste management licensing
Waste mobile plant at waste or sewage sites
Waste mobile plants are used for waste management activities in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Waste mobile plant includes:
- mobile plant treating waste soil and contaminated material
- mobile crushers and screeners.
What you must do
If you operate a waste mobile plant, you must have a waste management licence from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency or SEPA.
Contact your environmental regulator
How to apply for a licence
Environmental News Blog
-
My Year at NetRegs, A reflection on my time as an intern with the NetRegs team at SEPA. An overview of all the activities and projects I had the opportunity to participate in during my Bright Green Environmental Placement.
-
A day with Hydrology, SEPA's hydrometry unit is responsible for around 400 gauging stations and 350 rainfall monitoring sites. River gauging stations are important as they allow river levels to be monitored so flood events can be predicted and flood warnings sent out.
NetRegs on 
View our latest videos & subscribe to our channel.
NetRegs Update Newsletter
Free monthly email newsletter with environmental updates for Northern Ireland and Scotland