What information is required for Digital Waste Tracking?

GOV.UK points receiving organisations to Schedule 1 of the Digital Waste Tracking regulations for England and Wales and to the official receipt-of-waste spreadsheet for the complete data requirements.

The guidance highlights these main categories:

• Waste movement, carrier and receiver details.
• Waste classification codes.
• Recovery and disposal codes.
• Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) data where relevant.
• Hazardous waste data where relevant.

The receiving record needs enough information to identify the waste movement and the parties involved. This is why the quality of data captured during booking, transport and gate receipt matters to the later reporting step.

GOV.UK says waste classification codes form part of the required dataset. These are also referred to as List of Waste (LoW) codes or European Waste Catalogue (EWC) codes.

Classification should be treated as source data for the movement, not a label added solely at the reporting stage. The code needs to be supported by the actual waste description and the information available about the material.

The government guidance also requires recovery and disposal codes. These describe the treatment route associated with the waste rather than simply identifying what the material is.

Receiving operations therefore need to connect the incoming movement with the relevant recovery or disposal context before the receipt is ready to report.

Where waste contains a substance covered by the POPs requirements, GOV.UK says the receiving record must include the substance name and concentration value.

The guidance also says that where the required POPs information cannot be provided, the organisation must state why.

For hazardous waste, GOV.UK says organisations must check the hazardous properties that apply. For each relevant property, the reported information includes the applicable Hazardous Property (HP) code, chemical or biological components and concentration values for hazardous components, subject to the detail in the official guidance.

Where required hazardous information cannot be provided, the guidance says the organisation must state why.

Whether an organisation submits through the spreadsheet or through API-connected software, the same underlying problem remains: the required data must be available, accurate and reviewable before the submission deadline.

• Capture core movement and party details as early as possible in the workflow.
• Validate classification data before the receipt reaches the reporting queue.
• Make treatment, recovery and disposal context available to the people reviewing the receipt.
• Create a clear exception path for hazardous waste, POPs and missing information.
• Keep the submitted record linked back to the underlying operational movement for later review and audit.

GOV.UK says the new receipt-of-waste service initially runs alongside existing waste documentation. Waste transfer notes, Annex VII forms and hazardous waste consignment notes continue where required.

Permit-based waste returns and hazardous waste consignee returns also continue until later transition arrangements are introduced. Digital Waste Tracking should therefore be implemented as part of the wider compliance workflow rather than treated as an immediate replacement for every existing record.