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This guidance is for businesses that: Transport, store, treat or dispose of waste from domestic, commercial or industrial premises, such as landfills, waste treatment facilities, waste transfer stations and waste incineration plant, install and maintain sewerage systems, such as sewers, drains, cesspools and septic tanks, remove and dispose of sewage or sewage sludge from domestic, commercial or industrial premises, such as cesspools and septic tanks.

This guidance is relevant if you produce liquid effluent from your metal finishing operations and you treat your effluent on site. You should treat effluent before you discharge it because untreated effluent is likely to contain metals that could damage bacterial treatment beds at sewage treatment works, contaminate sewage sludge and cause water pollution. If you pollute water, you are very likely to be committing an offence. You could be fined or ordered to stop your operations.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are man-made chemicals. They are dangerous to human health and the environment and you must dispose of them correctly.

This section highlights the key pieces of environmental legislation relevant to businesses: lists of key current environmental legislation for Scotland and Northern Ireland. In most cases links are provided to full versions of the legislation on the Office for Public Sector Information (OPSI) website. Information on key forthcoming environmental legislation including EU Directives, and consultations from the UK Government, Northern Ireland Assembly and Scottish Government.

If your business has air-conditioned offices or carries out a manufacturing process that uses water as a coolant, it may have a cooling tower. Cooling towers remove heat from circulating cooling water systems, so that the water can be recirculated. The heat removed from the water is released to the atmosphere.

If your activities could cause environmental damage you will be committing an offence if you do not: Take all possible steps to prevent damage, report details of the risk to the enforcing body if the threat remains. For example, if you become aware of poorly maintained storage equipment that is at risk of leaking, or is already leaking, and could cause environmental damage, you must take action to stop environmental damage. If your action does not succeed in reducing the risk, you must report it to your environmental regulator.