The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has launched a consultation on the mandatory introduction of digital waste tracking.
It comes after governments across the UK have committed to implementing digital waste recording and working with industry on the development of a systems to do so.
Defra has called on local authorities to respond as one of the major groups of waste carriers in the country.
The publication comes with another consultation on the reform of regulations covering waste carriers, brokers and dealers, all directed at increasing recycling and building a ‘circular economy’ in the UK.
The consultation on digital tracking – which is being run in co-operation with the Scottish Government and Welsh Government – has been prompted by the fragmented approach to recording and lack of data on the movement of the 200 million tonnes plus of waste produced in the country each year.
“Large amounts of data are either not collected or not collated centrally,” the consultation paper says. “Multiple IT systems collect certain elements of waste tracking data. Some are paper based, others digital, some are run by private contractors, others by the government, and where use of existing central digital systems is non-mandatory, take-up is very low.
“As a result, it is very difficult to determine what happens to our waste and to have a comprehensive understanding of whether it has been recycled, recovered, or disposed of.
“Joining these fragmented systems up and replacing paper based record keeping will make it much easier and less time consuming for legitimate waste companies to comply with reporting requirements whilst making it much harder for rogue operators to compete in the industry and commit waste crime including fly tipping, deliberate misclassification of waste, illegal waste exports and the operation of illegal waste sites.”
Technology development
Prototypes of an electronic waste tracking service have been developed with two technology suppliers with support from the GovTech Catalyst Challenge fund. Work on a national service is now being supported by a user panel of around 1,200 members including councils and commercial operators.
Among the requirements are the ability to upload data from existing spreadsheets and from existing waste tracking software, and the provision of an API to support data sharing. The latter would also allow for the entry of data through the scanning of digital tags or QR codes.
In the section on what will be required of different carriers, it says local authorities will not need to track waste from individual household collections, but will have to record it when it arrives at a receiving site and onwards. Paid for collections from businesses and industrial premises will have to be recorded.
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