Aerosol Cans Became Universal Waste in 2020, and in Fourteen States They Still Are Not
Short answer: Aerosol cans became a federal universal waste on 7 February 2020. Adopting that rule is optional for states, and fourteen have not adopted it, so in those states the lighter track does not exist at all.
A body shop goes through aerosol cans the way it goes through masking tape. Adhesive remover, cavity wax, glass cleaner, spot primer, brake cleaner, silicone remover. When a can is used up it is usually not a waste at all. When it still holds product or propellant and is being thrown away, it may be a hazardous waste, and in 2020 EPA gave shops a lighter way to handle that.
Whether your shop can use it depends entirely on which state you are in.
What the 2020 rule did
EPA published Increasing Recycling: Adding Aerosol Cans to the Universal Waste Regulations on 9 December 2019 at 84 FR 67202, effective 7 February 2020. It added aerosol cans as the fifth federal universal waste, alongside batteries, pesticides, mercury-containing equipment and lamps, and amended 40 CFR parts 260, 261, 264, 265, 268, 270 and 273.
Universal waste is a lighter track for hazardous wastes that are widely generated and commonly recycled. The practical differences for a handler are the ones worth knowing:
- It does not count toward your generator category. 40 CFR 262.13(c)(6) excludes universal waste managed under part 273 from the monthly quantity determination that decides whether you are a very small, small or large quantity generator.
- You get a year, not ninety days. A small quantity handler may accumulate universal waste for no longer than one year from the date it was generated or received, under 40 CFR 273.15, and must be able to demonstrate how long it has been there.
- The handler thresholds are high. Under 40 CFR 273.9 you are a small quantity handler until you accumulate 5,000 kilograms of universal waste, counting all five categories collectively.
The part that catches people
Here is the mechanism that explains everything else on this page, in EPA's own words. From the rule's State Authorization section:
This final rule will be less stringent than the current Federal program.
And, immediately following:
Because states are not required to adopt less stringent regulations, they will not have to adopt the universal waste regulations for aerosol cans, although EPA encourages them to do so.
EPA says the same thing on its state programmes page: "State adoption of the universal waste rules is optional because the rules are less stringent than the previous requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)."
This is the opposite of how most federal environmental rules reach a shop. A rule that tightens requirements has to be adopted by authorised states within a set period. A rule that loosens them does not. So the federal aerosol can rule took effect immediately only where EPA runs the programme directly, which EPA names as Iowa, Alaska and Puerto Rico. Everywhere else it arrived when, and if, the state decided.
The fourteen states that have not adopted it
EPA maintains a table of which universal wastes each state programme includes. Reading that table on 28 August 2026, 37 of the 51 jurisdictions it covers list aerosol cans, and 14 do not.
| State | 811121 facility records in ECHO |
|---|---|
| Maryland | 1,149 |
| Louisiana | 892 |
| Minnesota | 865 |
| Washington | 584 |
| New Jersey | 560 |
| Nebraska | 342 |
| Alabama | 289 |
| Kansas | 259 |
| Rhode Island | 184 |
| Connecticut | 132 |
| Nevada | 101 |
| Arkansas | 82 |
| Oklahoma | 78 |
| South Dakota | 16 |
Four states are marked in EPA's table as having had an aerosol can programme before the federal rule existed, with their rules treated as functionally equivalent: California, Colorado, Ohio and Utah. The 2019 rule itself named five states with programmes already in place, adding New Mexico to that list. We report both as each source states them.
How much of the industry that covers
Joining EPA's state table to EPA's own ECHO facility export gives the size of the gap. Of the 29,634 facility records classified under NAICS 811121 in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, 5,533 are in a state that has not adopted aerosol cans as a universal waste. That is 18.7%.
Roughly one facility record in five sits in a state where this federal option does not exist, six and a half years after the federal rule took effect.
The same caveat applies here as on our EPA compliance record page: these are facility records EPA holds under this NAICS code, not a census of body shops. A shop appears only if it is in a federal or delegated programme at all.
Why this matters more than it sounds
Our read of RCRAInfo found that 88.4% of handlers classified 811121 are very small quantity generators or not generators at all, and 11.3% are small or large quantity generators. Generator category is not a label; it drives training, accumulation limits, manifesting and reporting.
Because 40 CFR 262.13(c)(6) keeps universal waste out of the monthly count, moving aerosol cans onto the universal waste track can lower the quantity a shop counts. Whether that changes any particular shop's category depends on what else it generates and how much. The rule creates the option. It does not follow that any given shop crosses a threshold, and we have not measured how many would.
In the fourteen states above, the option is not available at all, whatever the arithmetic would have said.
What the rule does not do
It does not make an empty can a hazardous waste. A can that has been used to its intended purpose and holds no significant residue is generally not a hazardous waste in the first place, and the universal waste question never arises. The rule is about cans still holding product or propellant when discarded.
It does not let you puncture cans casually. 40 CFR 273.13(e) lets a handler puncture and drain, but only using a device specifically designed to safely puncture aerosol cans and contain the residual contents and emissions, under written procedures, with a written spill response procedure and a cleanup kit on hand. The contents that come out must go into a container meeting 40 CFR 262.14 through 262.17, and the handler must make a hazardous waste determination on them under 40 CFR 262.11. Puncturing does not make the waste disappear; it moves it from a can into a drum you now own.
It does not relax the container. Universal waste aerosol cans must be accumulated in a container that is structurally sound, compatible with the contents, free of evidence of leakage or damage that could cause leakage, and protected from sources of heat. Cans showing evidence of leakage must be separately contained, overpacked with absorbents, or immediately punctured and drained.
It does not override a stricter state. A state may regulate more stringently than the federal programme. The fourteen states above are not lax; they simply never took up an option to be lighter.
The claim we could not stand up
The premise we started with was that most shops never re-papered after the classification changed. We could not measure that, and we are not going to assert it.
There is no register of which shops manage aerosol cans under which track. Universal waste handlers below the large quantity threshold do not notify EPA, which is much of the point of the programme. What can be measured is the regulatory geography, which is what this page reports: whether the option exists where a shop is, and how many facility records sit where it does not.
How to use this if you run a shop
Find your state in the table above. If it is there, aerosol cans are not universal waste for you, and a consultant or supplier telling you otherwise is working from the federal rule rather than your state's. If it is not there, the option exists, and the questions are whether your waste aerosol cans are hazardous waste at all, whether the accumulation and container conditions are ones you can actually meet, and whether your written procedures exist on paper rather than in someone's memory.
Either way, the citation to check is your own state's universal waste rule, not 40 CFR 273. EPA's table links each state's regulations.
Sources and method, and the limits of both
The federal rule. Increasing Recycling: Adding Aerosol Cans to the Universal Waste Regulations, 84 FR 67202, published 9 December 2019, effective 7 February 2020, RIN 2050-AG92, docket EPA-HQ-OLEM-2017-0463. Quotations above are from its State Authorization section.
The regulations. 40 CFR 262.13(c)(6) for the generator count exclusion, 40 CFR 273.9 for definitions and handler thresholds, 40 CFR 273.13(e) for accumulation and puncturing conditions, 40 CFR 273.15 for the one year limit. Current eCFR text as read on 28 August 2026.
The state table. EPA's State Universal Waste Programs in the United States, table headed Universal Wastes in Each State and State Additions, read on 28 August 2026. It covers the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Territories are not in it.
The facility counts. EPA's ECHO Exporter bulk file, our copy dated 2 July 2026, 3,162,002 rows, filtered to an exact token match on NAICS 811121 in the FAC_NAICS_CODES field, which yields 29,646 records nationally. Twelve of those are in Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, which EPA's state table does not cover, leaving 29,634 as the denominator here. The generator figures come from RCRAInfo and describe a different population, as our EPA compliance page explains.
Limits. EPA's state table is a summary EPA maintains, not the state rules themselves; where a shop's compliance turns on it, read the state citation. State adoption is a moving target and this page is a reading on one date. The ECHO figures describe records EPA holds, not shops that exist. Nothing here is legal advice.
Corrections
None yet. When something on this page turns out to be wrong, the correction will be logged here with the date, what it used to say, and why it changed.
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.
Where this fits
Each link says what it is for. We add one only when a reader on this page has a real reason to need that page next.
- What EPA's Compliance Database Actually Says About Body Shops (where the generator tiers and the facility counts on this page come from, and what EPA's database does and does not record)