The £100,000 would cover staff training, familiarisation time, requirements familiarisation, customer engagement, changes to current IT systems and the provision of any on-site technology, among other things.
However, the respondents also suggest their organisations could save up to £40,000 in the first year via data storage costs, time spent checking data quality, not having to complete or submit waste returns and time spent obtaining information from customers.
A summary of responses was published today (15 December) after a joint consultation which ran between January and April. The UK government, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland were all involved (see letsrecycle.com story).
The consultation sought views on replacing paper-based record-keeping with digital tracking of what waste is being produced and where it ends up.
There were more than 700 respondents, of whom 85% came from England. Thirteen per cent of the respondents were waste site operators, while waste carriers and waste producers made up 18% each.
The governments said they would publish a full response to the consultation in 2023.
Consultation
Elsewhere, 79% of respondents agreed on the proposed types of waste to be tracked. This includes ‘controlled waste’, encompassing hazardous and non-hazardous household, commercial and industrial waste, and ‘extractive waste’, such as that from quarries.
In terms of the data required, 84% of respondents believe details of the destination for all waste movements should be tracked, alongside more than three quarters (79%) who wanted details of the person who classified the waste to be tracked.
Nearly a third (32%) of respondents believe it would take between one and three years to transition to real time recording for movements or transfers of hazardous waste, while 40% think it would take the same time for non-hazardous waste.
The “most mentioned” barriers to real time recording include cost, time, client or supplier adoption of the service, access to available technology, available resources, training and setting up or merging existing systems.
More than a third (39%) of respondents said carriers should enter information 24 hours before moving hazardous and non-hazardous waste.
Nearly three quarters of respondents agreed with the proposed offences and associated enforcement options. These include a fixed monetary penalty for failing to register on the waste tracking service where required and a variable monetary penalty for Intentionally or “recklessly” providing incomplete or false information in a digital record, among other things.
Waste crime
The introduction of mandatory digital waste tracking across the UK is seen as a means of tackling waste crime, including fly-tipping.
Asked in parliament in November what estimate she had made of the amount of waste managed illegally in England in each of the last five years, recycling minister Rebecca Pow said 18% of all waste in 2021 was “perceived to be illegally managed at some point”.
She added: “Estimating the amount of waste managed illegally in England is challenging due to the nature of the waste crime.
“Waste crime is geographically dispersed, involves a large number of groups and individuals who actively seek to avoid detection by the Environment Agency and where violence and intimidation to deter reporting can be common.
“The Environment Agency has begun to estimate this figure and can only provide data for the last year.”
Ms Pow said digital records of waste movements would allow regulators to detect when waste does not reach a site licenced to accept it, “which may indicate illegal activity.”
Related link
Introduction of Mandatory Digital Waste Tracking
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