OPINION: On 1 October 2026, waste compliance in England changes for good. From that date, any site holding a permit to receive waste must record every load on Defra’s new Digital Waste Tracking service. Wales starts on the same date, and Scotland and Northern Ireland follow in January 2027. Carriers, brokers, dealers and exporters come into scope in October 2027.
It’s long overdue. Our sector has lagged behind manufacturing, logistics and retail when it comes to going digital. Too much of the industry still runs on paper slips, manual weights and systems that don’t talk to each other.
That fragmentation has helped create the conditions for waste crime, which the legitimate waste industry estimates costs the UK economy £1 billion a year. According to the Environment Agency’s National Waste Crime Survey 2025, only 27% of waste crimes are ever reported. When a price sits below the true cost of lawful disposal, someone is cutting corners. When every load leaves a digital record, that becomes much harder to hide.
But a national database is only as good as the data going into it. If the data is wrong at the start, it is wrong all the way through. I’ve spent the last 15 months leading Sortera’s preparation for this deadline, and I’ve found that getting it right comes down to a few basics that any operator can put in place.
What good looks like
It starts at the booking. The first conversation with a customer is where the waste type, European Waste Catalogue (EWC) code and certification are set, and every later step depends on them. It is the most underrated part of the journey. When I rebuilt our Customer Service function, accurate data capture at the first call became the foundation of everything we do. Operators who treat booking as admin rather than compliance will find the errors surfacing later, on a public record.
Weight has to be right at the gate. Accurate tonnage at the weighbridge is what the new service depends on, and it is also where performance downstream begins. What is recorded on arrival should match what is later recovered, recycled or sent for refuse derived fuel (RDF).
Checks should be automatic. With two working days to report every load, re-keying data from paper is a risk few sites can afford. Software that validates records, flags gaps for correction and submits directly to Defra removes the most common source of error. At Sortera, with almost 1,000 jobs a day and more than 200 trucks, it is the only way the numbers work. Every step should be traceable. Linking routing, collection and yard data means any load can be followed from booking to treatment. Connecting route optimisation and live traffic data with yard and tipping operations has been a central part of my role, and it has shown me how much becomes visible once the systems talk to each other. That is what regulators will increasingly expect, and it lets operators spot anomalies early rather than after an inspection.
None of this requires a revolution. For most operators, it means joining up the systems they already have and taking the data seriously from the first phone call.
What it means for waste producers
Producers do not report to the service themselves, but they still carry a duty of care, and the new records will make it far easier to see where waste really goes. That is good news for anyone who needs evidence for ESG reporting or tender submissions. It is less comfortable for anyone relying on a contractor whose price looks too good to be true.
If you use a waste contractor, three questions are worth asking now. Are they registered on the Digital Waste Tracking service? Can they show you a digital record of every load, from collection to treatment? And do those records match the EWC codes on your job paperwork?
Looking ahead
When carriers, brokers and dealers join in October 2027, the UK will finally have a genuine cradle-to-grave view of waste. The next step is already visible. Image recognition could let a yard identify the waste type and flag contaminants or hazardous items from a single photo as a skip is tipped, then check it automatically against the original EWC code. Used well, technology like this makes waste safer, cleaner and easier to manage.
Compliance should not be the finish line for any of us. I push my own team to ask “why not?” rather than “why?”, because too much of our industry is still held back by a “we’ve always done it this way” culture. The question I keep putting to my peers is simple. If you were starting a waste business today, would you run it the way you do now?
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