Waste and Effluent Management Strategies and Services

With the recent promulgation of the National Environmental Management: Waste Act (Act No. 59 of 2008)[NEMWA], imminent promulgation of Waste Classification and Management Regulations, increasing costs of waste management, as well as increasing public awareness and consciousness around waste management issues, industry and government alike continually need to find innovative, environmentally sound and sustainable ways to achieve strategic competitive advantages, improved profitability, improved environmental management as well as legal compliance, as pertains to their waste and effluent management practises and thinking. EScience Associates’ dedicated team of highly experienced waste / effluent management practitioners are able to assist industrial and governmental clients in waste management decision making that will not only assist in achieving legal compliance to relevant ‘waste management’ legislation, but will also aim to improve environmental management, social acceptability and profitability of waste management activities undertaken, or proposed.

Current ‘waste management’ legislation in South Africa requires that any person who undertakes, or proposes, a waste management activity listed in Schedule 1 of the NEMWA to subject such activities to a process of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and an associated application for waste licensing in order for such activities to legally continue, or commence, respectively.

ESA have vast experience in successfully undertaking such EIA processes and have assisted a wide variety of industrial clients with EIA processes and associated waste licensing applications to date. In addition, ESA was, as part of an international project team, instrumental in assisting the National Department of Environmental Affairs in the compilation of the draft Waste Classification and Management Regulations in South Africa. This experience combined with strategic thinking, previous project experience and numerous strategic alliances positions ESA to facilitate the most challenging of EIA processes to meet the needs of our clients whilst maintaining environmental management standards and environmental legal compliance.

Additional specific service offerings include:

  • waste management strategies with a view to waste minimisation, re-use & recycling opportunities;
  • waste classification and hazard rating in terms of the Department of Water Affairs & Forestry (or US EPA) Minimum Requirements for the Handling Classification & Disposal of Hazardous Waste; and
  • development of waste treatment processes for hazardous waste streams with the aim of eliminating or limiting waste specific hazard qualities (i.e. reduce hazard rating or to rate as non-hazardous waste).