Guidance

Waste exemption: T13 treating waste food

This exemption allows you to recover waste food by decanting or unwrapping it and recovering the packaging.

Published 28 April 2014

From:: Environment Agency

Types of activity you can carry out

These include:

unwrapping waste food from a supermarket that is past its sell-by date so it can be composted or put through a digestion process
bulking up waste food or packaging to reduce transportation costs

Types of activity you can’t carry out

You can’t:

store or treat waste covered by the Animal By-Products Regulations that are going to be fed to animals
treat the waste food further, for example by composting under this exemption (see related exemptions)

Types of waste you can treat

The waste codes are listed in the List of Wastes (LoW) Regulations. You need to make sure your waste fits within the relevant waste code and description.

Waste code	Type of waste
020304, 020501, 020601, 020704	Materials unsuitable for consumption
200199	Non liquid foods unsuitable for consumption or processing

Amount of waste you can treat

You can store or treat up to 30 tonnes of waste at any one time.

Key conditions

You can treat the waste, including the packaging, by:

decanting
unwrapping
bulking up
sorting

No waste must be stored for longer than 7 days.

The treatment and storage must take place indoors, and in a secure place.

Other things you need to know

You should take measures to reduce odours by making sure that waste food is treated and moved on to be reused or recovered as soon as possible.

You also need to comply with other legislation, particularly The Animal By-Products Regulations.

Related exemptions

T23 – aerobic composting and associated prior treatment.

T25 – anaerobic digestion at premises not used for agriculture and burning the resultant biogas.

Register a T13 exemption

You need to register this exemption with the Environment Agency if you will meet the requirements:

Definitions

Hazardous waste – see How to classify different types of waste.

Secure – a container, lagoon or other place is secure in relation to waste kept in it if:

all reasonable precautions are taken to make sure the waste can’t escape
members of the public can’t gain access to the waste