An alteration to BATNEEC

BATNEEC is a regulatory concept which has caused concern both in terms of definition and application. BATNEEC has relied on end of pipe technology to prevent and control pollution, which has tended to ignore the role of managerial techniques, such as waste minimisation. Waste minimisation has been publicised widely as a method of reducing costs and assisting compliance, but no robust methodology has been presented. There is evidence that this weakness has slowed down its use in compliance. HMIP (now the Environment Agency) has recently developed and tested a more robust methodology, the 3Es, which should enable more industrialists to use the concepts of waste minimisation as BATNEEC, thus moving away from the end of the pipe up into the process. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.