Electronic duty of care on track to roll out in 2014

A groundbreaking electronic system which will remove the need for 25 million paper waste transfer notes in the UK each year is on track to roll out in early 2014 following extensive stakeholder engagement.

The electronic duty of care project (edoc) is being led by the Environment Agency and is seeking to modernise the way waste movements are recorded.

Under UK law, all businesses have a Duty of Care to ensure they produce, store, transport and dispose of their waste without harming the environment. One of their responsibilities is to complete Waste Transfer Notes (WTN) every time waste is passed from one party to another and keep them for at least two years.

But, the current system is paper-based and it results in at least 25 million WTNs being produced a year with around 50 million pieces of paper being stored at any one time. The new system is intended to make it easier for businesses to track their waste and record waste data while saving them an estimated 5 million a year.

Philip De Caux, edoc partnership manager at the Agency, told letsrecycle.com this week (April 17) that the project was on course to develop a prototype system by the end of 2012.

He said: We are on track. We are due to go out for tender in July 2012 for the IT system. In February we appointed IT specialists IPL to draw up a specification in consultation with stakeholders.

We will have a prototype up and running by the end of this calendar year and then there will be various testing phases and a big communications exercise ahead of roll-out in 2014.

Benefits

As the system is voluntary, Mr De Caux said stakeholder input was critical to ensure that businesses wanted to use it.

Edoc will be a voluntary system we dont have any legislation to force people to use it so we need to create a system that has obvious business benefits so we need lots of stakeholder input, he explained.

Barriers

As part of its research, the edoc team contacted 1,800 businesses to identify what barriers there might be to companies using an electronic system. While 50% or respondents said they would welcome the system, others were not so keen.

Data ownership, security and confidentiality are a particular area of concern for many stakeholders and significant time and detail has been spent to ensure any system developed will protect commercial data and protect against unauthorised access.

There is good support of it but clearly people need to know more, said Mr De Caux. People are worried what additional work they might have to carry out. If they have their own systems in place they are worried about the effort of integrating them.

There will be a huge communications exercise to get people to use it. It is about delivering what people want.

Red Tape

Last month, the edoc programme hit the headlines when Defra announced the results of its Red Tape Challenge, designed to reduce the burden of regulation on business (see letsrecycle.com story).

The department pointed to the savings which it claimed the edoc system would create and said it would also look to free businesses from having to fill out waste transfer notes, by allowing them to use other forms of evidence, such as invoices, to provide certain required information instead.

The idea behind this is to make the whole system more flexible in delivering greater flexibility around waste transfer notes so that there is more than one way of complying with the Duty of Care.

At present, a wide variety of information has to be provided on waste transfer notes including the the type of waste and SIC code, the names and addresses of the waste producer and waste receiver and whether they have a permit or licence to take it.

Commenting on the Red Tape Challenge, Mr De Caux said that he was confident the edoc system would be flexible enough to incorporate any changes put in place.

He said: Defra has said it will look at relaxing requirements and we have to make sure we keep that in mind in developing the system. The requirements are likely to be different in England to those for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Project

The 3.5 million, four-year edoc project kicked off in January 2011 and has received 50% of its funding from the EU LIFE+ fund because it is the first project of its kind in Europe.

We had to prove it was unique in Europe to get funding, explained Mr De Caux. It is a demonstrator project which means other member states will have access to it.

The Agency is working on the project with a number of partners, including the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management (CIWM), waste services broker Reconomy/ Critical Resource Limited, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), Welsh Government, Defra and Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). It is also receiving input from the Environmental Services Associations Technical Advisory Group.

Brian Marshall, Reconomys environment and compliance manager, said: The current paper-based system makes it difficult for most companies (producers) to track their waste to ensure it is disposed of correctly. A further issue is the lack of information available to regulators, especially regarding commercial and industrial sector waste that gives little opportunity to make use of the waste hierarchy and therefore provide an understanding of its waste streams.

By having more detailed information available, opportunities for additional innovations in recycling and recovery together with a greater understanding of waste streams and prevention would become a possibility.