RCRA Hazardous Waste Generator Statistics
According to EPA's 2023 biennial reports, Large Quantity Generators (LQGs) of hazardous waste produced over 31 million tons of hazardous waste in 2022. Separately, across the 2021 and 2023 biennial report cycles combined, EPA's Office of Inspector General counted a total of 13,359 facilities listed as LQGs. Below are EPA's own published national figures for the RCRA hazardous waste generator program: the three generator categories and their thresholds, how much waste LQGs generate, and EPA's own cumulative national inspection and enforcement totals for LQGs from 2020 through 2024, every number sourced to EPA's own published pages and its own Office of Inspector General.
The three generator categories
RCRA Subtitle C regulates hazardous waste generators based on the amount of hazardous waste generated in a calendar month, sorted into three categories:
| Category | Monthly threshold |
|---|---|
| Very Small Quantity Generator (VSQG) | 100 kg or less of hazardous waste, or 1 kg or less of acutely hazardous waste |
| Small Quantity Generator (SQG) | more than 100 kg, but less than 1,000 kg, of hazardous waste |
| Large Quantity Generator (LQG) | 1,000 kg or more of hazardous waste, or more than 1 kg of acutely hazardous waste |
Source: U.S. EPA, Categories of Hazardous Waste Generators.
How many Large Quantity Generators, and how much waste
Each LQG must submit a biennial report detailing the type and total amount of hazardous waste it generated and how that waste was managed. According to the 2023 biennial reports, LQGs produced over 31 million tons of hazardous waste in 2022. Across the 2021 and 2023 biennial report cycles combined, EPA's Office of Inspector General counted a total of 13,359 facilities listed as LQGs.
Source: U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General, Evaluation of Trends in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act State-Level Enforcement Data (Report No. 26-E-0025).
EPA's national inspection plan for LQGs
Per the EPA's 2021 Compliance Monitoring Strategy for the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle C Program, 20 percent of LQGs should be inspected annually so that every LQG in the country is inspected in a five-year period. EPA has not set an equivalent annual inspection expectation for VSQGs or SQGs.
Source: U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General, Evaluation of Trends in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act State-Level Enforcement Data (Report No. 26-E-0025).
National inspection coverage and enforcement totals, 2020-2024
EPA's Inspector General built a research dataset of 6,827 LQGs that consistently exceeded the monthly LQG generation threshold in both the 2021 and 2023 biennial reports (this is a subset of the 13,359 total LQGs above, not the full count; the OIG excluded 6,532 generators that did not consistently exceed the threshold). From 2020 through 2024, the EPA and authorized states cumulatively inspected 5,499, or 81%, of those 6,827 LQGs.
Separately, the Inspector General's report also states the national activity behind those inspections: there were 8,800 inspections of 5,452 LQGs from 2020 through 2024 across all states.
| Measure | National total, 2020-2024 |
|---|---|
| LQGs in the research dataset | 6,827 |
| LQGs inspected at least once (coverage) | 5,499 (81%) |
| LQGs inspected (inspection-activity count) | 5,452 |
| Total inspections conducted | 8,800 |
| Inspections that found at least one violation | 4,661 (about 54%) |
| Violations identified | 23,404 |
| Enforcement actions taken | 5,156 |
| Formal enforcement actions | 861 (about 17% of enforcement actions) |
| Formal actions that included a penalty | 535 |
The 5,499 coverage figure and the 5,452 inspection-activity figure are the Inspector General's own two published counts and are not stated by the report as the same number; this page publishes both exactly as the report states them, rather than assuming they reconcile. Every figure here is a national cumulative total, summed across all states and territories. Source: U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General, Evaluation of Trends in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act State-Level Enforcement Data (Report No. 26-E-0025).
What this data does, and doesn't, cover
This is EPA's RCRA hazardous waste generator program: the VSQG/SQG/LQG categories that sort facilities by how much hazardous waste they generate each month, and EPA's own published national figures on LQG counts, waste tonnage, and inspection and enforcement activity. RCRA generator status is one of the government-record sources a Phase 1 ESA's regulatory database review checks under 40 CFR 312.26: 312.26(b)(2) names "hazardous waste handler and generator records and permits" as one of the record classes that regulatory database review covers for the subject property. This page has no state-by-state breakdown: the Inspector General's underlying report analyzes enforcement data by state, but every figure published here is the report's own cumulative national total, not a single state's figure. The inspection and enforcement totals above cover only the Inspector General's 6,827-facility research dataset (LQGs that consistently exceeded the monthly threshold in both the 2021 and 2023 biennial reports), not the full national count of 13,359 LQGs, and only the 2020-2024 period the report analyzes.
Sources
Every figure on this page traces to one of the following primary sources, all fetched and verified on 2026-09-25:
- U.S. EPA, Categories of Hazardous Waste Generators
- U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General, Evaluation of Trends in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act State-Level Enforcement Data (Report No. 26-E-0025)
- Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, 40 CFR 312.26 (Reviews of Federal, State, Tribal, and local government records)
How to cite this page
"RCRA Hazardous Waste Generator Statistics," Phase 1 ESA Quotes, https://phase1esaquotes.com/rcra-generator-statistics/, accessed 2026-09-25.