Keep CCA Out of Mulch, EPA States

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) has sent out a clarifying memo to its regional offices dictating that scrap wood treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA) cannot be used to make mulch products.

The memo, signed by Director of OSWER Robert Springer and Office of Pesticide Programs chief Jim Jones, says that the original exemption for CCA wood from being characterized as a hazardous waste dates from 1980, and is only for those who “utilized the arsenic-treated wood and wood product for these materials’ intended end use.”

Regarding the recycling of this treated wood—often used as lumber for outdoor decks, stairs and playground equipment—the EPA says, “Any CCA-treated wood used to produce wood mulch is not the ‘materials’ intended end use,’ therefore wood mulch produced from CCA-treated wood is not exempt from regulation as hazardous waste.” The real or intended end use of CCA wood is as a building material, the memo says.