Your Environmental Duties in Victoria: A Practical Guide for Waste, Recycling and Manufacturing Businesses

Oct 14, 2026 · Allan Cummins

Overhead aerial view of a recycling facility with separated piles of scrap metal and other materials.

Prevention is now the law

Since 1 July 2021, Victoria's Environment Protection Act 2017 has required every business to act before harm happens, not just clean up afterwards. If your site sorts, stores, recycles or processes waste, or manufactures anything, the Act puts clear legal duties on you as a "person conducting an activity".

Those duties sit alongside the Environment Protection Regulations 2021, the Environment Reference Standard and EPA Victoria's guidance. This article explains, in plain terms, what each duty asks of you and how to show you are meeting them.

The General Environmental Duty: the centre of everything

The General Environmental Duty (GED), in section 25 of the Act, applies to every business in Victoria, with or without an EPA licence. It requires you to minimise the risks of harm to human health and the environment from pollution and waste, so far as reasonably practicable.

The key point is that you can breach the GED even if no pollution ever happens. Having an unmanaged risk is enough.

In practice, the GED means you must:

Use and maintain plant, equipment and processes in a way that minimises risk.
Have systems in place to use, handle, store and transport substances safely.
Give staff and contractors the information, training and supervision they need.
Keep up with what your industry knows about the hazards and the controls that work.
Document your preventative actions to enable demonstration of your commitment to compliance.

What does "reasonably practicable" mean?

You are not expected to remove every risk at any cost. You are expected to weigh up:

How likely the harm is.
How serious the harm could be.
What you know, or should reasonably know, about the hazard and how to control it.
What controls are available and suitable.
Whether the cost of a control is grossly out of proportion to the risk.

That third point is called the "state of knowledge". It includes EPA guidance, industry standards and Australian Standards. If EPA has published guidance for your industry, it will be hard to argue you did not know about a risk or control it covers.

A simple way to work through this is the hierarchy of controls: eliminate the hazard first, then substitute something safer, then use engineering controls, and only then rely on procedures and protective equipment.

When something goes wrong: incidents and contaminated land

If a pollution incident does happen, such as a fire, a spill or a stormwater discharge, two duties apply straight away.

Duty to respond (section 31). You must take reasonable steps to restore the affected area to the state it was in before the incident, so far as reasonably practicable.
Duty to notify (section 32). If the incident causes, or threatens, material harm to people or the environment, you must report it to EPA as soon as practicable after you become aware of it. Call EPA on 1300 372 842.

Land you manage or control carries its own duties.

Duty to manage contaminated land (section 39). Identify and understand any contamination on your site, and minimise the risks it poses, so far as reasonably practicable.
Duty to notify of contaminated land (section 40). Certain contamination must be reported to EPA, for example where it exceeds set levels and could affect people or neighbouring land. The Regulations set out exactly when this applies.

For waste and recycling sites, fire is the incident EPA watches most closely. Have an emergency plan, practice it, and make sure staff know who calls EPA and when.

Industrial waste: your responsibility doesn't end at the gate

Most waste from a business is "industrial waste". The Act makes everyone in the chain responsible for it: the business that produces it, the carrier that moves it, and the facility that receives it.

If you produce or receive industrial waste, you must:

Classify it correctly, using the Regulations and EPA's waste classification guidance.
Store and handle it so it does not cause harm (or risk of harm) while it is on your site.
Send it only to a lawful place, meaning a site authorised to accept that type of waste. Check this yourself; don't just rely on the contractor.
Keep records of what you sent, where it went and who took it.

If you receive waste, you must also make sure your site is lawfully allowed to accept it, and in the quantities you are taking in.

Some wastes carry extra duties because of their hazards:

Priority waste must be isolated, contained and managed using the safest practicable method, and you must pass on information about its hazards to whoever handles it next.
Reportable priority waste (for example many chemicals, solvents and contaminated soils) must be tracked through EPA's Waste Tracker system, moved only by permitted vehicles, and sent only to sites permitted to receive it.

Permissions: licences, permits and registrations

Higher-risk activities need an EPA permission before they start. The Regulations list these "prescribed activities" in three tiers:

Tier

Licence (development and operating)

Permit

Registration

Risk level

Highest

Medium

Lower

Typical examples

Large waste and resource recovery facilities, landfills, major chemical or metal manufacturing

Medium-sized waste facilities, some manufacturing processes

Smaller waste storage and recycling sites, some transport of waste

A permission does not replace the GED. You must meet every condition of your permission and still minimise risks the conditions don't mention.

For waste and recycling facilities, storing combustible materials is a major focus. Sites that receive or store small volumes specified combustible recyclable and waste materials, such as paper, cardboard, plastics, timber, e-waste and floc, usually need an A13 permission. The tier (licence, permit or registration) depends on how much you receive and store at any one time.

Manufacturers should check whether their processes, emissions or on-site waste handling trigger a permission. If you change your operations, recheck: an increase in capacity or a new process can move you into a higher tier.

Enforcement, penalties and personal liability

EPA has a wide set of tools. It can inspect your site, issue improvement or prohibition notices, order you to stop accepting materials, impose fines, accept enforceable undertakings, or take you to court.

The penalties are significant. With the 2026–27 penalty unit set at $209.10:

Breaching the GED can cost a company up to about $2.09 million (10,000 penalty units), and an individual up to about $418,000.
An aggravated breach, where a GED breach is intentional or reckless and causes serious harm, carries higher fines for companies and up to five years' jail for individuals.

Directors and senior managers can also be personally liable. Officers must exercise due diligence: understand the environmental risks of the business, make sure resources and systems are in place to manage them, and check that those systems are working. Simply delegating environmental issues to a site manager is not enough.

A practical checklist

The best defence is a documented, working risk management system. Start with these steps:

☐ Walk your site and list every activity that could harm people or the environment: storage, processing, emissions, stormwater, noise, odour, dust and fire.
☐ Assess each risk and record the controls in place, using the hierarchy of controls. (If you're not sure about the risks, engage a professional that is. Ignorance of a risk is no excuse).
☐ Read the EPA guidance that applies to your industry, and close any gaps it reveals.
☐ Confirm you hold the right permission, and that you comply with every condition.
☐ Classify all waste streams, check every receiving site is lawful, and keep records.
☐ Set up Waste Tracker for any reportable priority waste.
☐ Prepare and test an emergency and fire management plan.
☐ Train staff and contractors, and keep training records.
☐ Brief directors and managers on their due diligence obligations.
☐ Review the system at least once a year, and after any incident or operational change.

The Act rewards businesses that think ahead. If you can show that you identified your risks, took reasonable steps to control them and kept those controls up to date, you are in a strong position, both with EPA and with your neighbours.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Check the current legislation and EPA guidance, or seek professional advice, for your specific situation.

Allan Cummins is a Director of Circular Resources Australia.