Trade effluent
If you produce trade effluent, it pays to manage it proactively. That way you can be sure of meeting your legal obligations – and you can cut your costs too.
What is trade effluent?
Simply put, if there’s a process in your industry that uses water, the liquid waste you discharge into the sewer is trade effluent.
Trade effluent covers waste water from processes such as:
- industrial production
- washing and cooling plant, machinery, vehicles or floors
It doesn’t include normal kitchen and toilet waste, or clean rainwater.
Trade effluent is covered by special laws, designed to protect the sewerage system and the wider environment from harmful waste.
What do I need to do?
Any business that produces trade effluent needs to apply for consent from Scottish Water. This sets out the amount and quality of effluent you’re allowed to discharge.
Discharging trade effluent without consent is an offence. It’s your legal responsibility to manage your effluent and ensure it stays within the set limits.
How we can help
Our experts can find the right way to ensure you understand and meet your trade effluent consent levels comfortably. We’ll look at your treatment operation and come up with a custom-made solution for your site.
We’ve got some useful techniques to measure and monitor your trade effluent discharges to help you verify or challenge official readings.
Contact us
Get in touch with our trade effluent specialists – use our contact us form.
Our services
We can:
- suggest ways to improve your treatment processes
- come up with the best method to reduce sludge volume – from chemical solutions to the latest aerobic biological treatments
- ease the burden by taking on the operation of your treatment plant
- produce a guaranteed output by taking care of the entire process
- design, operate and build new plant
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