Be Part of the Ultimate Safety & Compliance Community
Trending news, knowledge-building content, and more – all personalized to you!
For a number of years, if you wanted to ship your hazardous waste, you had to fill out a manifest and send it with the waste. The manifest was a shipping paper, giving information about the substances being shipped.
The purpose of the manifest was so that shipments of hazardous wastes and materials could be tracked from their point of generation to their final destination - the so-called “cradle-to-grave” system.
There was no specific form to fill out, as far as EPA was concerned, but many states came up with their own forms. Individual companies devised forms. Certain disposal sites wanted their form used. A generator sometimes had to fill out five or six different shipping papers. It got real messy.
Then in 1984, the federal government decided to standardize the manifesting. The agency published a mandatory form called the Uniform Hazardous Waste Manifest, which was to accompany every shipment of hazardous waste in the country. And, most important, it was to be the only required shipping paper, eliminating all the duplicate paperwork.