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In a major move to tackle the environmental damage, community blight, and £1billion a year clean-up costs associated with waste crime, on 1 October the government introduced a final piece in the first phase of its mandatory Digital Waste Tracking: it is now mandatory for waste receivers. There are further clauses that will affect waste collectors, like Restore Datashred, that will be effective from spring 2027. We break down what this legislation means and offer a light touch overview of how this may change how you handle waste in your business.
Table of contents
What is Digital Waste Tracking and why is it being introduced?
Waste and its illegal disposal are hot topics across the UK. The news cycle revolves around:
· tips that seemingly appear overnight and blight communities,
· rubbish stinking and leaching toxins and forever chemicals into the soil and waterways,
· highly recyclable materials left to fester, unreclaimed and lost from our economy.
Digital waste – computers, servers, monitors, printers, peripherals, and so on – is especially problematic because it requires special handling of its components, which include materials such as glass, plastics, precious and heavy metals. In the disposal phase, these elements need to be extracted, made safe, then enabled for re-use or for responsible disposal, ie, not buried in the ground or fly tipped. These are all processes that ultimately benefit the circular economy and our collective sustainability goals.
By introducing Digital Waste Tracking legislation, the government aims to enforce responsible disposal and create a full audit trail for all digital waste. This is currently applicable to waste receivers but is being extended early next year to include waste collectors, ie, professional recycling businesses like Restore Datashred. Systems will be required to track consignments of digital items from collection to official disposal point, as well as gather more accurate and monitored information about the waste operators working under permits and licences.
How will Digital Waste Tracking affect my business?
Responsible businesses who already keep their digital waste correctly and safely segregated before disposal via accredited, secure recycling collectors and receivers may not notice much change.
If, on the other hand, you cannot guarantee the secure disposal of both your data and then IT materials, components or, indeed, whole assets and are unsure of how sustainable the outcome of your disposal is, compliance with this new legislation may need some investment. While expending effort on new ways of doing things may feel unappetising, being able to uphold full compliance and sustainability credentials is certainly appealing to customers, whether current or potential.
What are the penalties for not complying with Digital Waste Tracking?
Naturally, since this is a set of new legal requirements, you commit an offence if your business does not comply with the clauses laid out in the regulations. This includes rules on deadlines, outages, written records, correcting errors, digital exclusion and making accurate records using the service.
If you break any of these rules you face either a cost recovery notice, a fixed or variable monetary penalty, criminal prosecution and a fine and, in extremis, up to two years in prison.
How does the Digital Waste Tracking service work?
Greater scrutiny on ‘what’ and ‘where’ will doubtless entail even closer focus on data gathering and keeping and on the mechanics of auditing. Thus, we might expect barcoding of individual digital assets at point of collection to establish an electronically tracked trail, with official waste transfer notes and certificates of destruction (where relevant) being the hallmark of compliant receipt and handling.
During this initial phase, until spring 2027 at any rate, ensuring your disposal partner – in our instance, Restore Datashred – is compliant in their own systems and processes, ie, as collectors working compliantly with waste receivers and processers, is pivotal in your planning.
Do I need a specialist waste tracking service provider?
From now on, any professional waste service provider should be using tracking systems to trace and monitor that digital devices are being disposed of correctly at compliant, responsible waste receivers. In your business’ due diligence of a waste service provider, like Restore Datashred, you should ensure that they are:
- Accredited by the Environment Agency of your country (Wales and England, Scotland, Northern Ireland) as experienced, compliant waste handlers.
· Accredited to ISO 9001 (service and best practice), 14001 (environmental) and 27001 (information management and protection) standards.
· Suppliers of waste transfer notes and certificates of destruction (where relevant) as proof of translocation and transaction. - Guarantors of sustainable actions, through recycling all materials they handle, either through shredding and re-use, or in partnership with reputable, responsible waste receivers and processors, with an overall commitment to 0% to landfill.
- Working to enhance your business’ reputation for compliance with Digital Waste Tracking legislation and your regard for the longevity of the environment.
A hybrid approach allows you to establish and become part of a professional process, meaning that all your confidential waste will be kept at your site in locked bins provided by Restore Datashred; you can arrange a collection structure that suits your irregular needs, such as monthly or quarterly, on site or off site; you can trust that all your sensitive data will enter an unbroken, audited chain of custody from the moment of collection to the moment it hits the shredding blades at one of our high-security destruction centres.
A swiftly issued certificate of destruction is proof of compliance, and you can rest easy in the additional knowledge that your securely produced shreds will go for recycling into new paper products – a further boost for your reputation, this time around sustainability.
Reduce your exposure to theft, compliance failures and preventable data breaches by going professional with your confidential data destruction. Low-volume or irregular shredding needs are not a problem for a professional, accredited document shredding provider.
Get in touchNew Digital Waste Tracking legislation, in force since 1 October, may not mean any immediate changes for your business but it does require a period of re-evaluation and adaptation to ensure you meet statutory and environmental policy demands.
By using an experienced digital waste collector, such as Restore Datashred, who is accredited by the environment agencies of the countries of the UK, the ISO standards system, and the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management – among others – you can rest assured that your digital waste will be processed compliantly then treated as a resource to be re-used, recycled and repurposed.
Need to find out more? Get in touch with our experienced digital waste collecting and tracking team on 0330 0538 541 option 2, or by filing your questions in our online form at www.restore.co.uk/datashred/contact-us/get-in-touch-customer-services/
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