CarrierNote
Recovery code

R1: Use as a fuel

Waste is used mainly as a fuel, or to make energy some other way.

The legal wording

Use principally as a fuel or other means to generate energy

A footnote to the annex says an incinerator for household waste counts as R1 only where its energy efficiency, worked out by a formula the footnote gives, reaches 0.60 for one permitted before 2009 and 0.65 for one permitted later.

From Annex II to the Waste Framework Directive, which the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 point to for every R code.

Recovery in the waste hierarchy

R1 is a recovery operation. The waste hierarchy ranks recovery above disposal, and a business that passes waste on has to take the reasonable steps open to it to follow that order.

The disposal code to compare it with is D10: Incineration on land.

On a Digital Waste Tracking receipt

For each EWC code (the six-digit code from the List of Wastes that says what a waste is) on a receipt, the site that takes the waste in records the D code or the R code, or both, for what it will do with it, and the weight each code covers.

Sources

Need the waste code? Look up the right EWC code in the List of Wastes.New to a term? The glossary explains POPs, HP codes, duty of care and the rest in plain English.

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CarrierNote is on the GOV.UK software provider list, connected to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking service. Receiving sites are in scope from October 2026 and carriers from October 2027, and you can be recording to DEFRA's standard from your first load, whenever you start.

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