R12: Exchange before recovery
Waste is exchanged before it goes on to be recovered under one of R1 to R11. Where no other R code fits, it also covers preparing waste for recovery, such as sorting, dismantling, crushing, shredding, repackaging or mixing it.
The legal wording
Exchange of waste for submission to any of the operations numbered R 1 to R 11
The annex adds, in a footnote: If there is no other R code appropriate, this can include preliminary operations prior to recovery including pre-processing such as, inter alia, dismantling, sorting, crushing, compacting, pelletising, drying, shredding, conditioning, repackaging, separating, blending or mixing prior to submission to any of the operations numbered R1 to R11.
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
R12 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.
It's a step on the way to another operation, so it fits a site that holds or prepares waste and then sends it on.
The disposal code to compare it with is D13: Blending before disposal.
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
- Annex I to the Waste Framework Directive: disposal operations
- Annex II to the Waste Framework Directive: recovery operations
- The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026: Sch. 1, para. 14: the D or R code for each waste code on a receipt
- The Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011, regulation 12: the waste hierarchy
- DEFRA: Digital Waste Tracking production approval tests: test R04, a receipt with no D or R code, accepted with a warning
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