Operating a transport company comes with unique environmental responsibilities. Alongside health and safety, vehicle compliance, and staff management, environmental management forms a core part of your licence to operate.
While environmental requirements for transport operations aren’t new, the landscape is changing. We’ve put together this article with our top tips to understand the requirements and avoid common risks.
Understand What Regulations Apply
Increasingly, transport companies are required to apply for and hold Resource Consents or Trade Waste Permits. However, many operations are also provided for by Permitted Activities under their Regional and District Councils’ Plans. It’s important to understand:
- How is your site zoned and what regulations apply. Under the District Plan, there are regulations for different zones, including what activities can occur on site and how you operate based on factors such as noise and light restrictions. If you don’t meet these requirements, you may be required to apply for a Land Use Consent or if you’re a well-established operation, potentially a Certificate of Compliance.
- Thresholds and compliance obligations apply from both the Resource Management Act (RMA) and Regional Plan(s). The focus here is on the type of activity as well as potential environmental effects.
One common mistake we see is assuming that if you don’t have a Resource Consent, you don’t need to worry. Non-compliance and enforcement action can be undertaken where general provisions of the RMA are breached.
Transport’s Top Three Compliance Risks
The areas we commonly support transport companies with are:
Dust emissions
Failure to manage dust and the nuisance emissions commonly results in complaints from neighbours to the Council. Ongoing failure to proactively manage this may result in enforcement action. During dry periods, keep an eye on dust and consider interim controls such as water tankers or sprinklers for high use areas of the yard, managing transport movements on unsealed areas, and ensuring that any areas under development are sealed or planted as soon as possible.
Spills to Stormwater
Due to the nature of transport operations, there is relatively high risk of unauthorised discharges to stormwater. This is a key focus area for councils given the potential environmental effects of the receiving environment. Simple controls include bunding, having suitable spillkits, routine vehicle pre-start inspections, and regular visual inspections of the yard and equipment to identify and manage failures, leaks or overflows.
Discharge Consent Compliance
With consents becoming more common and more complex, this is a big one so we’ve written a separate article on it – check it out here.
Why Proactive Environmental Management Matters
Solid environmental management reduces operational risks and interruptions to your business. It also helps to future-proof your business as environmental regulations evolve.
We’re here to help if you have questions about which regulations apply or if you need support with completing a risk assessment and implementing improvements to manage compliance.
