Media + residues
Spent garnet and grit with lead paint and antifouling, slipway and hardstand residues, dredged sediment.
Blasting takes old coatings off steel and hulls, and the spent garnet or grit carries everything it removed: lead paint, zinc, copper antifouling. Abrasive blasting and dry docks are both listed under the Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL). Slipways and hardstands accumulate the same residues over years of maintenance. Dredged sediment from working harbours carries the metals the harbour collected.
Abrasive blasting and coatings contractors
Ports, slipways, dry docks and boatyards
Bridge, tank and structural steel maintenance
Dredging and harbour maintenance
Class 1 landfill as hazardous. Spent media is bagged or binned and sent to landfill under the waste disposal levy at the hazardous rate, with the garnet or grit, which is most of the mass, paying the same gate fee as the coating fragments that made it hazardous. Contaminated sediment is landfilled or held in containment cells.
The metals and coatings come out. The media is verified and returned to use or to a lower waste class. Spent garnet goes back to the blaster or leaves as non-hazardous material, with the results from an independent laboratory on file. The metals and coating fragments leave as a small, defined concentrate.