What Is the EPA's General Environmental Duty, and Does It Apply to Your Factory?

The duty you have even without a licence

Most plant managers know EPA Victoria through licensing — a works approval, an operating licence, a dangerous goods permit. But since 1 July 2021, every business in Victoria carries a separate, standing obligation that doesn't depend on holding any permission at all: the general environmental duty (GED), set out in section 25 of the Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic).

Section 25(1) requires that anyone "engaging in an activity that may give rise to risks of harm to human health or the environment from pollution or waste" must minimise those risks, so far as reasonably practicable. Section 25(2) makes a breach committed in the course of a business an indictable offence. There's no size threshold and no exemption for small manufacturers — a 15-person sheet metal shop carries the same duty as a chemical plant, just with a different risk profile.

This matters because EPA doesn't need to catch you mid-incident to act. The duty applies continuously, to ordinary operations — how you store solvents, where your wash-down water goes, whether your forklift battery acid is bunded — not just to one-off spills.

What "reasonably practicable" actually means

The Act doesn't leave "reasonably practicable" to guesswork. Section 6(2) lists the specific matters you weigh:

• how likely the risk is to eventuate
• the degree of harm that would result if it did
• what you know, or ought reasonably to know, about the risk and how to reduce it
• the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or reduce it
• the cost of eliminating or reducing it

In practice this is the same reasoning WHS people already use for "reasonably practicable" under the OHS Act — except pointed at waterways and land instead of workers. If a $400 spill tray would have stopped $40,000 of contaminated soil remediation, EPA will have no trouble arguing it was reasonably practicable. Cost only wins the argument when it's genuinely disproportionate to the risk, not just inconvenient.

Penalties are not theoretical

A standard breach of section 25 carries up to 2,000 penalty units for an individual and 10,000 penalty units for a body corporate. Where the breach is intentional or reckless and causes (or is likely to cause) material harm, section 27's aggravated offence lifts that to 4,000 penalty units or five years' imprisonment for an individual, and 20,000 penalty units for a corporation. EPA's own fee schedule sets the 2026–27 penalty unit at $209.10 — meaning a standard corporate breach tops out above $2.09 million, well before you reach the aggravated tier.

EPA has been running statewide industrial inspection programs specifically targeting this duty. In one round covering more than 130 sites near waterways, inspectors issued 16 compliance notices and 181 advisories — the single biggest issue category was missing or inadequate chemical and waste storage, including secondary containment, followed by wash water and firefighting runoff reaching stormwater drains. EPA's CEO was explicit that businesses can expect enforcement action where the duty isn't met. Waste Tracker non-compliance is enforced separately too: two tyre recyclers were each fined $10,455 after a snap inspection found 300 waste tyres moved without a Waste Tracker record — EPA treats each missing record as its own offence.

Industrial waste: classification before anything else

Before you can meet your waste duties, you need to classify what you're generating. Under the Environment Protection Regulations 2021, you match your waste's description to a code in Schedule 5, which tells you whether it's ordinary industrial waste, priority waste (extra controls), or reportable priority waste (the highest tier, which must be tracked transaction-by-transaction). If more than one code could apply, you manage the waste as the more hazardous category; codes ending "-H" or "-NH" need EPA's Waste classification assessment protocol to resolve. Regulation 70 bans mixing, blending or diluting priority waste to shift it into a lower category.

If your waste is reportable priority waste — most solvent residues, waste oil in volume, and contaminated soil commonly fall here — every handover must be logged in EPA's Waste Tracker before the waste leaves site, recording the waste code, form, quantity, intended treatment, the transporter and the receiving facility. This is the system that caught the tyre recyclers above. If you store hazardous chemicals in volume, pair your waste classification with a proper hazardous substances register — EPA and WorkSafe inspectors will often ask for both in the same visit.

Stormwater: where most manufacturers actually fail

EPA's inspection data is consistent: stormwater contamination is the most common way manufacturers breach the GED, usually without realising it. Any stormwater drain on or near your site ultimately discharges to a local creek or the bay — untreated. Wash-down water, spilt coolant, swarf run-off, and firefighting water that reaches a stormwater pit are each treated as a discharge of waste, regardless of whether you intended it.

Practical controls EPA looks for: no stormwater inlets inside bunded or chemical storage areas; uncontaminated roof and yard water diverted away from storage and wash-down zones; triple interceptors or oil/water separators on drainage that could carry hydrocarbons; and a documented spill response plan with spill kits actually accessible at the point of use, not locked in an office. Sites handling flammable or dangerous goods decanting operations face an added ignition risk if static discharge during transfer isn't controlled — see our note on chemical decanting and static discharge fire risk for how that hazard and environmental duty overlap on the same drum.

Bunding and secondary containment, in numbers

EPA's Liquid storage and handling guidelines (publication 1698) give the actual sizing rules inspectors check against:

• Bulk tanks: bund capacity at least 100% of the largest tank (combined capacity if tanks are linked), plus a suggested 10% of the second-largest tank and 10% freeboard for rainwater.
• Drums and smaller containers: at least 25% of total stored volume, plus 10% freeboard where rain or firewater can enter.
• Construction: floors impervious to the stored substance (lined concrete or suitable coating — unlined earth bunds don't qualify); joints sealed; no drainage pipe through the bund wall other than a pumped sump.
• Placement: tanks or drum stacks generally set back from the bund wall by half their height, unless restrained another way.

AS 1940 governs volume calculations for flammable and combustible liquids specifically, and the guide notes other Australian Standards may add requirements depending on what you store. If your bunded chemicals also trigger a quantity threshold under dangerous goods law, check whether you also need a dangerous goods storage licence — the two regimes run in parallel and EPA, WorkSafe, and the fire brigade can each inspect the same bund.

What to actually do this quarter

1. Walk your site and list every stormwater pit — confirm none sit inside a bunded, chemical, or wash-down area.
2. Measure your bunds against the 100%/25% rules above, including freeboard, and check floors for cracking or unsealed joints.
3. Pull your waste classification codes for every waste stream and confirm which ones are reportable priority waste requiring a Waste Tracker record before transport.
4. Confirm spill kits are physically at the point of use, not just listed in a procedure.

None of this requires a consultant to start. It requires someone walking the yard with the checklist above and being honest about what they find — which is exactly what an EPA inspector will do if they turn up first.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 18 October 2026.