Q. Are there any hazardous wastes that you can exclude from hazardous waste management?

Certain materials are excluded from the definition of solid waste. If the material is not a solid waste, it cannot be a hazardous waste. The federal rules list almost 30 materials excluded from being a solid waste at 40 CFR 261.4(a). Some of those included are:

• Domestic sewage and mixtures of it with other wastes that pass through a sewer system to a publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) for treatment.
• Secondary materials reclaimed and returned to the original process or processes in which they were generated and reused in that production process.
• Excluded scrap metal being recycled (e.g., processed scrap metal, unprocessed home scrap metal, and unprocessed prompt scrap metal).
• Used broken or intact cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), or glass removed from CRTs, provided certain conditions are met.
• Hazardous secondary material generated and reclaimed under the control of the generator, provided numerous conditions are met.
• Solvent-contaminated wipes sent for cleaning and reuse, provided certain conditions are met.

Some of these solid waste exclusions are “conditional,” as they can only be taken advantage of if the generator follows the specified requirements associated with the regulatory exclusion.

Other specified materials are excluded from the definition of hazardous waste but must still be managed as a solid waste. The federal rules list almost 20 materials excluded from being a hazardous waste at 40 CFR 261.4(b). Some of those included are:

• Household hazardous waste (including garbage and sanitary waste from septic tanks derived from single and multiple residences and other residential units, such as hotels and campgrounds).
• Fly ash waste, bottom ash waste, slag waste, and flue gas emissions control waste generated primarily from the combustion of coal or other fossil fuels.
• Solvent-contaminated wipes sent for disposal, provided certain conditions are met.
• Non-terne-plated used oil filters, if they are gravity hot-drained as per specified methods.
• Used oil rerefining distillation bottoms used as feedstock to manufacture asphalt products.
• Used chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants from totally enclosed heat transfer equipment (e.g., commercial industrial air-conditioning and refrigeration systems that use CFCs as the heat transfer fluid in a refrigeration cycle, provided the refrigerant is reclaimed for further use.