Every Digital Waste Tracking date, and which one is yours.

Today, when waste changes hands, a paper waste transfer note travels with it. That note is the duty-of-care record: it says what the waste is, who produced it, who carried it, and where it ended up. Hazardous loads carry a second document called a consignment note. Digital Waste Tracking replaces both with a single record that everyone in the chain updates online.

Each record holds much the same information you already put on a transfer note, in a set format: an EWC code (the six-digit European Waste Catalogue number that classifies a waste) and a plain description of what it is, the weight, whether any of it is hazardous or contains POPs (persistent organic pollutants, a group of harmful chemicals found in things like some older sofas and foams), who produced and carried it along with the carrier's registration number, and where it was taken and what happens to it there.

When a record is submitted, DEFRA hands back a Waste Tracking ID, a unique reference for that movement. CarrierNote stores that ID against the record for you. A receiving site's incoming loads are filed with DEFRA today, and carrier movements are built and waiting to send the moment DEFRA opens that step.

A receiving site has until the end of the second working day after a load arrives to complete its record, and weekends and bank holidays don't count towards it. Carriers get their own timing rule with Phase 2, which DEFRA hasn't published yet. Either way CarrierNote keeps a clock on every record, so nothing slips past its deadline.

Every controlled-waste movement is in scope, hazardous and non-hazardous alike, and there is no minimum weight. One bag counts the same as a full skip.

Waste producers are not yet mandated. DEFRA's stated order is receiving sites first, then carriers, then a decision about producers. If your business only produces waste, you have nothing to file today, and anyone telling you that all producers must register from October 2026 is wrong.

Waste exemption holders are not in Phase 1, and come in with Phase 2, though DEFRA is looking at whether some of those sectors are brought in sooner. For now, extractive waste that never leaves a quarry or a mine, animal by-products and radioactive materials sit outside the service altogether, under rules of their own.

Digital Waste Tracking does not switch the old paperwork off on day one. Through the transition you keep your duty-of-care records the way you keep them now, including the two-year retention. Hazardous consignee returns carry on. Waste Data Flow, the separate national system local authorities report waste and recycling data through, sits outside the programme and stays where it is. Your waste carrier licence is a different registration again, held with the Environment Agency in England, or with SEPA, Natural Resources Wales or DAERA in the other three nations, and it carries on too.

So for a while you are doing both, which DEFRA acknowledges and treats as the price of the change. It is also the best argument for capturing a load once in software and letting it feed whatever each obligation needs, rather than writing the same facts out twice. If that means moving off a duplicate book, switching from paper says what changes on day one and what happens to the paper you already hold.

Simpler Recycling and Digital Waste Tracking often get mentioned in the same breath, but they are different things. Simpler Recycling is about standardising which materials are separated out for recycling, so the rules are the same across the country rather than changing from one council to the next. Digital Waste Tracking is about recording the movement once the waste is on the move. If you handle other businesses' waste you will come across both, so it is worth knowing they are separate obligations with their own timelines.