You must control certain odours that come from your business.

Odour controls can help your business prevent and manage odours. Masking agents such as air fresheners and sprays are not effective methods for controlling odour pollution.

We have produced a series of guidance sheets about odour controls. They should be read with our odour guidance for business. The odour controls include: 

Physical controls

How you plan and manage your site to reduce odour.

• Site planning and management: Addresses your site’s layout and processes, both initially and ongoing.
• Containment: Containing odour-producing sources can lower impact to the public.
• Odour covers: Physical barrier with extraction or odour treating properties.
• Effective odour-capture system: Any system that collects odours from a source; for example, an extraction fan or fume hood.
• Stacks: Releases emissions high and fast enough in outside air that odours are dispersed.

Biological and filter controls

These include odour treatment systems and odour filters. 

• Biofilters: Emissions fed into a source medium containing living material that capture and degrade pollutants.
• Bio-trickling filters and bioscrubbers: Emissions fed into sponge-like medium containing living material that  captures and degrades pollutants.
• Carbon filters: Pollutants are removed from air by filtering through activated carbon.
• Metal sintered filters: Microscopic metal pockets trap pollutants as air is passed through the filter.
• Metal mesh filters: Filter changes air direction as it passes through it, which traps grease.
• Effective microbes: ‘Good’ microbes that ‘eat’ odour-causing microbes are added to a medium.

Chemical controls

These involve using chemical reactions to reduce odour. 

• Thermal oxidiser: Using a temperature-controlled environment to chemically change emissions.
• Chemical scrubbing: Absorb the odour-causing pollutant into the scrubbing medium.
• Ozone treatment: Ozone reacts with odour-causing particles, chemically changing emissions.
• Photoionisation: UV light in a controlled environment causes chemical reactions, reducing odours.