How should you comply with digital waste tracking?
You have four routes, and one of them is not really a route at all. An honest look at each, including the one that costs us business.
The service is now live in public betaIf you're a receiving site, your deadline is October 2026. If you're a carrier, broker or dealer, it's October 2027. Either way the question is the same: how are you actually going to record this? There are four answers, and the right one depends entirely on the size and shape of your operation. Not sure which phase you're in? Start here.
We sell waste software, so read option 1 with that in mind. We have tried to be straight about where the other options genuinely beat us, because a business that picks the wrong route because of a sales pitch becomes a customer who leaves.
Subscribe to off-the-shelf software
Buy a product that already exists. Someone else has built it, tested it, and will maintain it. When the regulations shift, which they have repeatedly, it is their job to keep up, not yours.
The critical question to ask any vendor right now is simple: are you integrating with DEFRA's receipt of waste API, and when? That API is the mechanism that lets your existing system feed data straight into the tracking service, so you record a load once rather than twice. A vendor without a clear answer is a vendor who will make you double-key.
- +Already built, tested and in use. You are not the guinea pig.
- +A monthly fee instead of a capital project.
- +Regulatory changes become the vendor's problem.
- +Implementation support, so your team isn't figuring it out alone.
- -No product fits every business. Yours is not quite like anyone else's.
- -Sales processes can oversell. Ask for a trial, not a demo.
- -Pricing tends to move in one direction, and it isn't down.
- -You are dependent on someone else's roadmap.
Verdict: for the overwhelming majority of operators, this is the right answer. The exception is a business whose processes are genuinely unusual, or one large enough that building becomes economic.
Build your own system
Build exactly what your business needs. Choose the platform, the hosting, the devices, the fields. Integrate with your existing infrastructure. For a business that genuinely cannot find a product that fits, this is a legitimate route.
It is also the route most often chosen for the wrong reasons, and the one that most often disappoints.
- +Complete control. Every field, every workflow, exactly as you want it.
- +Your data, on your infrastructure, on your terms.
- +You own an asset rather than renting one.
- +Can start small and grow with the business.
- -A full bespoke build routinely reaches six figures.
- -You need developers, a project manager, architecture and domain knowledge.
- -Scope creep is not a risk, it is the default.
- -Every future regulatory change is yours to implement, on your deadline.
Verdict: viable if you're large, genuinely unusual, and have done this before. If you're building because you couldn't find the right product, look harder first. Building is far more expensive than searching.
Use the government service directly
DEFRA's service is now live in public beta, so this is no longer a theoretical option. You can register, and you can record movements directly, without buying anything.
There is also a spreadsheet-based submission route for operators who have no software at all. Worth knowing: DEFRA has been explicit that this is a temporary measure, expected to remain in place until at least October 2027. It is a bridge, not a destination, so if you build your process around it, you are building on something designed to be taken away.
- +No software to buy. The only cost is the £26 annual charge.
- +It is definitionally compliant. It is the regulator's own system.
- +Available now, in public beta, so you can try it before your deadline.
- -Manual entry. At volume, this becomes a full-time job for someone.
- -It records for the regulator, not for you. No routing, no invoicing, no operational data.
- -The spreadsheet route is explicitly temporary.
- -Double-keying if you already run any other system.
Verdict: genuinely fine if you handle a handful of movements and run no other software. It scales badly. The moment someone is spending hours a week keying loads in, you have paid for software anyway, just in wages.
Do nothing and stay on paper
We hear this a lot. It's never going to happen. The deadline will move again. There will always be fly-tippers, so why bother.
The deadline scepticism was reasonable, once. It has genuinely moved several times. But the position now is different in kind, not degree: the regulations have been laid in Parliament, the service is live, and the API is published. This is not a consultation any more.
The fly-tipping argument doesn't survive contact with logic either. Rule-breakers have always existed. That has never been a reason for the compliant majority to stop complying, and it certainly isn't an argument for handing regulators a reason to look closely at you.
There is also a practical point that gets missed. Even after the digital mandate, the existing requirement to complete written descriptions of waste has not been removed. Paper records continue to apply alongside digital ones. So "staying on paper" was never going to save you the digital work. It just adds the digital work later, in a hurry, without preparation.
- +Nothing changes today.
- -Non-compliance is enforceable by the environmental regulators.
- -Your customers will start asking for your plan, and "haven't got one" is an answer.
- -You end up doing it anyway, at the deadline, badly.
- -A broken audit trail exposes everyone in the chain, including your clients.
Verdict: not a strategy. It is a decision to make the same change later, with less time and more risk.
So which one?
Strip out the noise and it comes down to volume and complexity.
If you handle a handful of movements a month and run no other systems, use the government service and save your money. If you handle real volume, or you already run software you'd rather not double-key into, buy a product that integrates with the API. If you're big and genuinely unusual, build, but go in with your eyes open about the cost.
And whichever you pick, the actual work is not choosing the software. It is changing how your people record a load at the moment it happens. That takes longer than any implementation, which is the real argument for starting now rather than in September.
Source: DEFRA's digital waste tracking service policy paper. Position as at July 2026. General information, not legal advice.
Try it before you buy it
We said ask for a trial rather than a demo, so it would be a bit rich not to offer one. Pick the route that matches the size of your operation.
And if the government service is genuinely the right fit for you, use it. We'd rather tell you that now than sell you something you don't need.