Hazardous waste data has been available for years through EPA or through websites like RTK in the past, what is special about e-Manifest data compared to what was previously available?
What Is e-Manifest?
USEPA’s Hazardous Waste Electronic Manifest System (e-Manifest) was launched June 30, 2018. This system tracks all waste shipments required to be on a hazardous waste manifest. All data on the hazardous waste manifest is entered into the system and some biennial report data can also be entered per waste line item.
BRS Data
Prior to e-Manifest, the primary source for hazardous waste data was from the EPA’s Biennial Report System (BRS), which collected annualized data every other year from both generators and destination facilities. This data was reported on an aggregated (grouped) waste stream basis from generators and hazardous waste TSDFs. Also, data from the generator was reported both what was generated and what was managed, including waste managed onsite. (More BRS Information)
Differences Between BRS Data amd e-Manifest
Current Data
e-Manifest data is to be made available to the public after 90 days. A very, very small amount of manifest data is protected for Homeland Security concerns, but the vast amount of data is accessible after 90 days.
BRS data is not reported until March after the reporting year is over and the data takes many months to be compiled and available for public access. When the data is made publicly available it is at best a year.
Line Item Level Data
BRS data previously provided waste stream data grouped by generators and destination facilities and added together for annual totals.
e-Manifest provides the data of every line item of every manifest including container quantity, container type, unit of measure and total quantity.
This is kind of a double-edged sword. You have much much more detailed data. You can analyze shipment frequency, container types, average container weights, volumes per month, week or even day. However, getting big picture aggregated data is much more difficult compared with BRS.
Way More Data!
EPA provides BRS data going back to 2001. The data size of e-Manifest has already surpassed BRS even though e-Manifest began in mid-2018.
DOT / UN Shipping Information
One of the useful features of e-Manifest is being able to query by UN number or even keyword in the line item description. Generators should also keep in mind that this DOT / Shipping data could be used for compliance monitoring by EPA or possibly other agencies.
Non-Hazardous Waste
Waste requiring shipment on a hazardous waste manifest even if not Federally hazardous are reported into e-Manifest. Also, many generators ship non-hazardous waste on the same manifest with their other hazardous wastes, many of these line items get logged into e-Manifest.
Need Help?
(Shameless plug alert)
wastestrends.com is a free resource provided by Concertive.
We can help you with data analysis and market research utilizing e-Manifest, your own data and numerous other datasets.
If you are a destination facility and need help integrating your system with e-Manifest, we can build a custom solution for your or you can use or own application. Contact