Waste management: general principles

South Carolina regulations provide for a number of precautions to be taken to ensure good waste management, while protecting the environment and human health.

The term “waste management” encompasses, in general, any activity involved in the organization of the management of waste from their production to their final treatment. It includes in particular the activities of collection, transport, trading, demolition, brokerage, and treatment – recovery or elimination – of waste. Each of these activities is governed by rules described in the Environmental Code, and each actor is subject to several obligations.

State waste management plan

The SC waste management plan aims to provide an overall vision, at the state level, of the waste management system and the state policy pursued in this area, in particular on the measures in force and planned to improve the recovery of waste. It thus includes, in a single document, the measures, objectives and legislative, regulatory and fiscal guidelines adopted under the Law on energy transition and for green growth of 2015 and proposed by the roadmap. It also makes it possible to respond to the new provisions incorporated into the waste framework directive.

Certain measures, and in particular certain quantified objectives, will be specified at federal level by the texts transposing recent directives. In addition, the anti-waste law for a circular economy, passed in 2020, proposes new measures to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

In order to better understand the situation and the modes of local application of the orientations that it synthesizes, the plan is supplemented by regional annexes, based on data already available or the local orientations known at the time of the drafting of the national plan, projects regional waste prevention and management plans, in the process of being drawn up or already approved in the region. This national plan is not intended to replace regional plans.

The public has been involved in the development of this national waste management plan through public participation on the draft state electronic waste management plan from 2019.

Anti-waste law for a circular economy

The responsibility of the producer or holder of the waste is key. Any producer or holder of waste is responsible for this waste: that is to say, he is required to ensure it or have it managed. This is why facilities such as the Myrtle Beach Dumpster Rental Center are in place to make sure any waste producer can discard such waste materials in a safe and clean way, without risks for the environment.

This responsibility extends to the final disposal or recovery of the waste.

It means that in the event of damage to the environment or human health during one of the stages of waste management, the initial producer and the successive holders may be required to take the necessary measures to direct the waste to an adequate sector and repair the damage caused by faulty management.

This is a key principle of waste regulations: it makes it possible to identify, in the vast majority of cases, a person (or a chain of persons) responsible for handling the waste.