Welcome to you who have residues from combustion and incineration, slags, and other inorganic waste which - according to existing legislation - is to be classified as hazardous or non-hazardous waste. Perhaps, and hopefully, you might find something helpful on this internet site.

I, Rolf Sjöblom at Tekedo, has worked on classifying inorganic wastes as hazardous or non-hazardous since January 1st 2002, when new regulations came into force. They implied that waste was to be classified, not only according to its name (category), but primarily according to the content. Thus, it is solely the intrinsic properties of the waste that should determines the classification. To carry out such a classification is somewhat of a "mission impossible" since the rules are based on those in the legislation for chemicals which hardly can be accused of being particularly adapted to inorganic waste.

It has therefore been of great help in this work that I have a basic understanding from my work on becoming an associated professor in in structural chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry, Department of Inorganic Chemistry, at the Uppsala University, and that I have worked for seven years at what is now the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority. Also, and since the year 2011, I am an adjunct professor in Waste Technology at the Luleå University of Technology.

Since the start of the work on classification in the year 2002, Tekedo has carried out classifications at more than thirty plants, mainly in Sweden. In this work, many questions have been identified and resolved, often in collaboration and cooperation with the customers. The work has been documented in plant-specific reports as well as in open reports and presentations. The latter can be read and downloaded from here.

The latest report, accessible by this link, is intended for individual studies and classifications, i. e. that the reader should be supported to make a classification him- or herself. The report can also be downloaded from the webb pages of the Ash Programme at Energiforsk - the Swedish Energy Research Centre, and Avfall Sverige – the Swedish Waste Management Association. These organisations have also provided the funding for the work. The report is in Swedish but has a brief summary in English. It is still generally up to date, but the following new developments should be considered.

1.   There are new rules for ecotoxic. They appear in the EU-regulation 2017/997 of the 8th of June 2017.

2.   There is a new guidance document from the EU on classification: 2018/C 124/01.

3.   Also it should be considered that the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA, has a database of the hazardous properties of chemicals called the "CL Inventory" which can today (i. e. on February 23rd, 2020) be opened using the following link: https://echa.europa.eu/sv/information-on-chemicals/cl-inventory-database.

You are welcome to make contact if you wish to know more. See below for contact information.