Overview
How is 2020 comparing to 2019? Is Covid-19 impacting waste volumes? Are more generators shipping or less? What is happening overall to hazardous waste volumes?
We will delve into these questions and more in this article. For the first 6 months of 2020, we will see that hazardous waste volumes are down approximately 7%, non-hazardous waste volumes are down nearly 30%, with total volumes down nearly 18%.
Outline
Total Volumes
Covid Impacts
Generators Shipping
Manifests Shipped
Our Analysis
Our analysis is performed by sorting, revising, cleaning up and analyzing the millions of e-Manifest and Handler records provided by EPA. EPA makes available hazardous waste data after 90 days. This article contains the most current content available. Due to major volume discrepancies in e-Manifest, our volume/tonnage data has been revised. Visit here for more information on our revisions to volume data. For more information on e-Manifest, you can visit here.
Total Volumes
Below we show the total tons shipped by generators for the first 6 months of 2019 and 2020.
You can see total tons are down nearly 18% year over year. This chart is interactive. Hover your mouse over the 2020 bar and you will see the total tons and the % change from the previous year.
e-Manifest contains all data for waste required to be shipped on a hazardous waste manifest. This includes waste that is not Federally regulated as hazardous waste but require the use of a hazardous waste manifest due to state (ex. Texas Class 1 waste) or Federal requirements (TSCA Regulated PCB shipments). We will call these wastes “non-hazardous” (non-haz) in this post. So how did volumes change in relation to hazardous and non-haz waste?
The bar matching the “Y” legend is for hazardous waste and the blue “N” bar is for non-haz waste.
Volumes are down for both hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Interestingly, non-haz volumes were more than haz for the first 6 months in 2019. However, that trend has changed in 2020. Haz volumes are down approximately 7% in 2020. In addition, non-haz volumes are down nearly 30%.
Covid Impacts
How has covid impacted generators and waste shipments in 2020? Can we see any impacts from analyzing eManifest data?
This chart shows monthly total volumes of waste shipped in e-Manifest beginning January 2019 though July 2020
The moving green line in the chart below shows monthly 2020 volumes compared to prior year for all waste in e-Manifest.
Looking at the previous 2 charts we see an increasing rate in the decrease of volumes beginning Q2 2020. Many covid lockdowns began at the end of March 2020 and then we see April volumes at 76.3% of 2019 volumes. Volumes were down around 10% YOY for Q1 but then we have nearly a 25% decline in April followed by a 32% decrease in May and a 20% decrease in June 2020.
We see a similar trend if we look at total volumes weekly, with total volumes beginning to decrease around Week 14 of 2020, which could correspond with the many lockdowns beginning end of March beginning of April.
Generators Shipping
With volumes decreasing, is there a decline in the number of generators shipping? The below chart shows the number of unique EPA ID numbers that shipped in 2019 and 2020.
We see around a 14% reduction in the number of non-haz generators shipping and similarly approximately a 12% reduction in the total number of hazardous generators shipping.
The chart above shows the number of unique generators shipping per week. The green line shows number of 2020 generators shipping in comparison to the 2019 number (blue bar). You can clearly see a steeper decline beginning around week of 11 of 2020, corresponding with March lockdowns.
Note About Quantifying Number of Generators
A 100% accurate unique number of generators shipping is not possible to determine with e-Manifest data because many CESQGs/VSQGs do not use a unique EPA ID number. However, the data gives you an idea of the number of registered and unique generators that are shipping in 2020 compared to 2019. You can read more about our generator analysis here.
Manifests Shipped
The below chart is set up exactly like the previous generator chart, except here we are counting the unique number of manifest tracking numbers per week. The green line comparing 2020 numbers to the previous 2019 number of manifests represented as a blue bar.
Looking at the number of manifests used per week in 2020 compared to 2019, we see a similar trend in line with the number of generators shipping per week. In this case we begin to see the decline a little sooner around week 11 and 12 (beginning to mid-March.)
Furthermore we see that in Q2 2020, the number of manifests shipped is down nearly 30% YOY. This is compared to around 7% for Q1 2020 YOY.
Stay Tuned
We will have more analysis concerning US waste volumes, e-Manifest and other waste trends. Please sign up to keep up with the latest in hazardous waste trends. If you would like more information about Concertive and how we can help your environmental company, please contact us.