Improving Regulations Docket 

Environmental Protection Agency 

EPA Docket Center, Mailcode: 2822T 

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW. 

Washington, DC 20460 

Email: ImprovingRegulations.SuggestionBox@epa.gov

Executive Order 13563 - Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review 

Retail Hazardous Waste Operations 

Dear Environmental Protection Agency: 

The Home Depot would like to first thank the Environmental Protection Agency for allowing the 

opportunity to submit comments to the agency under Executive Order 13563, titled “Improving 

Regulation and Regulatory Review.” 

The Home Depot operates ~1900 locations throughout the United States (including the territories 

of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), Canada, China and Mexico. Our store inventory consists 

of up to 40,000 different kinds of building materials, home improvement supplies, appliances 

and lawn and garden products. The company has the privilege to serve over 500,000 customers 

per day. 

The Home Depot has a tremendous opportunity to make a positive impact in the lives of our 

customers and their respective communities throughout the United States. This commitment is 

easily demonstrated in the efforts put forth to be a retail sustainability leader. A few notable 

successes provided in Home Depot’s 2010 sustainability strategy report 

(https://corporate.homedepot.com/wps/portal) include reducing store energy usage by 2.6 billion 

kilowatt hours since 2004, in 2009 sales of The Home Depot’s Eco Option products resulted in 

$740 million in utility bill savings for our customers, the company recycled more than 410,000 

lbs of CFL bulbs, 105,000 lead acid batteries, and 667,000 lbs of rechargeable batteries in 2009 

as well. These accomplishments demonstrate The Home Depot strives to be a market leader in 

environmental compliance and sustainability. 

The Home Depot feels that further positive impact and community involvement is possible if 

certain regulatory burdens were streamlined. Specifically, the Resource Conservation and 
Recovery Act (RCRA) has become a confounding regulatory challenge for the retail industry. 

RCRA’s hazardous waste management regulations were initially developed many years ago to 

prevent the improper disposal of hazardous waste and respective damage to the environment. 

The regulations were tailored to more align with industrial processes such as manufacturing and 

chemical processing. Retail operations are presented with significant challenges when compared 

to the typical industrial process. Industrial processes are typically more predictive in terms of 

waste characterization and generation volumes. Waste determination and characterization are 

two fundamental RCRA requirements which retail programs will struggle when evaluated or 

inspected from a strict compliance perspective. 

The characterization of waste is burdensome for retailers as wastes are mostly evaluated at a 

product level with varying degrees of information available to make an effective determination 

on the hazardous properties of a product. The retailer is often dependent on the vendor or 

manufacturer to supply accurate and timely information to meet the requirements of health and 

safety regulations and ultimately RCRA. The characterization of products which may potentially 

become waste is a complex and subjective task. Retailers are forced to become experts on 

product hazards and assumed waste implications while the manufacturers which own the product 

intellectual property are mostly allowed to operate without a level accountability in the life cycle 

of a product. It’s not suggested that manufacturing bear all the accountability and costs of the 

entire life cycle but there should be some level of harmonization for the product data available on 

a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) so any retailer can make an efficient and effective waste 

determination. 

This process must be extremely difficult for more resource challenged retailers, grocers, 

restaurants, or convenience stores. It appears the level of compliance enforcement is not equally 

distributed across the retail sector as some smaller companies may choose to avoid the 

compliance requirements due to limited technical knowledge or regulatory awareness. It also 

appears that the level of inspection and enforcement actions at a state level target larger retail 

companies which in most cases are attempting to meet the compliance requirements, limit risk to 

their respective businesses, and do the right thing for the environment and respective 

communities in which they operate. One could argue that the violations which are cited may not 

directly align the overall intent of the RCRA agenda. Compliance matters regarding 

characterization are very much subjective based on the local regulatory agency’s experience and 

expectations. 

RCRA also requires that a waste determination be conducted to determine if a potentially 

regulated material should be discarded or can still be used for its intended purpose. Waste 

determination has become a very confusing and frustrating process filled with subjectivity and 

significant impact to retail operating strategies. Waste can be potentially generated through 

various processes such as customer satisfaction returns, customer take back programs, household 

hazardous waste events, product recalls, damaged product containers or packaging, off 

specification product, unauthorized dumping, customer spills, and merchandising set changes. 
As you can see there is a large variability in how waste can be generated. Each waste generation 

variable contains many different pivotal events as well. It’s very difficult for a retailer to 

effectively implement the waste determination requirements as currently written. There are 

many circumstances where the retail industry attempts to create alternative processes to prevent 

the generation of potentially regulated waste which has resulted in additional scrutiny by 

environmental compliance agencies. 

As you are fully aware, the RCRA regulation requires that generators of hazardous waste have a 

strategy to minimize waste generation where possible. This is a very important piece of the 

RCRA regulation if it can be utilized as written. Retailers have several processes which can be 

leveraged to minimize the environmental, regulatory, and fiscal impact of generating large 

amounts of hazardous waste. Specifically, the industry utilizes reverse logistics systems to 

consolidate goods in order to effectively manage process and transportation costs. The reverse 

logistics platforms are uniquely designed to consolidate products which can be used for their 

intended purpose through selling, returning to vendor, or donating to charitable organizations. 

Again, there is a significant amount of subjectivity revolving around the reverse logistics 

processes and waste determination. There are legitimate opportunities to prevent waste from 

unnecessarily being generated as the consolidation process incentivizes regional recyclers, 

salvagers, and charitable organizations to offer outlets as transportation and processing costs are 

minimized. In addition to the reverse logistics process, product recalls or vendor return policies 

offer the opportunity for the retailer to provide the manufacturer or vendor merchandise to be 

recycled, reused, evaluated, or repackaged and sold depending on the circumstances rather than 

strictly discarding the products as regulated wastes. Retailers which have the best intentions and 

arguably meet the intent of the RCRA regulation are becoming scrutinized with multi-million 

dollar penalties by attempting to leverage different outlets to meet the waste minimization 

requirements set forth in RCRA. 

The Home Depot has taken full ownership of protecting the environment where stores operate 

and will continue to do the right thing by ensuring any unauthorized waste is properly managed. 

The unexpected generation of potentially hazardous waste results in a perceived increase in 

waste generation related to a store’s operations. Generation rates will vary with customer returns, 

seasonality, and unforeseen dumping in location parking lots. The existing RCRA regulations 

requires generation rates be calculated over a calendar month. Due to unforeseen seasonality and 

local waste generation events, generation rates factored over roughly 30 calendar days could 

force retailers to fluctuate from Conditionally Exempt Small Quantity Generator (CESQG) to 

Small Quantity Generator (SQG) and possibly Large Quantity Generator (LQG) each month. 

This variation could be normalized if an average waste generation over many months could be 

used rather than a single month. 

The process challenges previously mentioned could be further streamlined by evaluating 

potential consumer product exemptions relating to waste determination, characterization, and 

generator status. As stated, a significant portion of waste generated can be driven by unforeseen 
events in retail operations. It doesn’t seem this level of variability was planned for in the RCRA 

regulations. The EPA provides that Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) isn’t regulated as 

hazardous waste when generated by the consumer allowing these items to be discarded in the 

“trash.” As provided on the EPA Household Hazardous Waste – Disposal Options webpage. 

...”Federal law allows disposal of HHW in the trash. However, many communities have 

collection programs for HHW to reduce the potential harm posed by these chemicals. EPA 

encourages participation in these HHW collection programs rather than discarding the HHW in 

the trash.”

Retailers are held to a high level of accountability and expend large amounts of resources to 

ensure effective hazardous waste management systems are in place to manage a small percentage 

of “hazardous waste” in consumer packaging or quantities. The consumer population is allowed 

to discard the same products via municipal waste. Obviously, the consumer HHW waste streams 

will be much larger than the waste generating process within a retail company. Understanding 

the EPA encourages consumers to find alternative outlets for household hazardous waste 

(HHW), there are few outlets available and often the retailer becomes the “disposal site” for 

consumer generated hazardous wastes. It seems that EPA could follow the path of other 

regulatory or standards organizations such as the International Fire Codes (IFC) which provides 

relief for materials provided in consumer quantities or packaging. An exception provided for 

household and consumer quantities in the 2006 International Fire Code (IFC) – Chapter 27, 

Hazardous Materials Section 2701.1 8 is provided below. 

“Corrosives utilized in personal or household products in the manufacturer’s original 

consumers packaging in Group M Occupancies.” 

From an environmental regulatory standpoint, the Universal Waste rules are well positioned to 

provide similar exceptions for consumer goods. The rules exists to provide less specific 

management requirements for low risk wastes commonly generated in many different industries. 

Universal Wastes currently include batteries, pesticides, mercury containing equipment and 

lamps. All of which are most likely offered to the consumer through retail outlets. The Universal 

Waste rules Part 273.8 provide guidance for persons handling household hazardous waste but do 

not specifically address retail operations and consumer goods. The Universal Waste rules could 

be expanded providing retailers relief on arduous product level waste classification requirements, 

ineffective waste determination requirements, and burdensome generator level management 

system requirements. It seems reasonable to suggest that when products have value and can be 

offered for recycling, reuse, salvage, or donation, retailers should pursue those options. If the 

Universal Waste rule could be expanded to streamline and clarify the previously mentioned 

requirements, resources most likely could be re-allocated to create outlets for household 

hazardous wastes to be more effectively and efficiently managed on a national scale. 
The Home Depot has attempted to communicate the significant challenges presented to retail 

operations in complying with the RCRA regulations as currently written, interpreted, and 

enforced. The EPA has the opportunity to implement positive change for the consumer and the 

environment through expanding the Universal Waste regulations to include consumer products. 

This regulatory review could help streamline a burdensome process for the retail industry. 

Specifically, the EPA could consider improvements in the following areas: 

 Provide consumer product relief under the Universal Waste rules allowing consumer 

products to be characterized generally as Universal Waste limiting the resource intensive 

product level hazard characteristic review 

 Provide consumer product relief under the Universal Waste rules allowing for a consumer 

product waste exemption minimizing SQG or LQG management system constraints and 

respective regulatory scrutiny 

 Provide consumer product relief under the Universal Waste rules allowing consumer 

product waste determinations to be made at a consolidation or returns processing facility 

or provide a specific ruling on when waste determination must be made in the retail 

returns process 

 Provide definitive ruling on the regulatory requirements to donate or salvage potentially 

regulated consumer products 

 Provide relief and regulatory guidance for retailers which participate in household 

hazardous waste collection programs 

The Home Depot feels these recommendations will help initiate much warranted 

transformational change in the RCRA regulation. This change will provide further opportunities 

for retailers to help the EPA meet the intent of the RCRA regulation by providing avenues to 

minimize the generation of hazardous waste. Thank you again for the opportunity to partner 

with the EPA in an attempt to create a safer, more compliant, and sustainable work and shopping 

environment for our communities, customers, and associates. 
Home Depot Contact Information: 

Ryan B. Williams, CSP, CHMM 

Sr. Manager, Environmental, Health & Safety 

The Home Depot 

2455 Paces Ferry Road 

Atlanta, Ga. 30339 

770-384-4980 

 ryan_b_williams@homedepot.com 

Mike Maddocks 

Director, Environmental & Regulatory Compliance 

The Home Depot 

2455 Paces Ferry Road 

Atlanta, Ga. 30339 

770-384-3540 

mike_maddocks@homedepot.com