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Waste data exchange standard
Waste Data Exchange Standard
Title
Waste data exchange standard
Category
- [x] Data
- [x] Document
- [ ] Technical
- [ ] Other Suggestions
Challenge Owner
Anthesis (www.anthesisgroup.com) are sustainability consultants; one of two companies selected as part of the Phase 2 Govtech Catalyst Smart Waste Tracking Challenge.
Short Description
Waste data is currently managed by a variety of paper-based and digital systems; the latter mainly proprietary and owned/managed by the larger waste sector companies. This makes tracking waste from bin to end of life problematic as there is no standard for interoperating between systems.
User Need
DEFRA have identified that illegal waste activity drains the UK economy of around £600 million every year and the current systems for tracking household and commercial waste are outdated and largely paper-based.
An independent review into serious and organised waste crime commissioned by the Home Office last year found that the lack of digital record-keeping is exploited by organised criminals who mislabel waste to avoid landfill tax or illegally export it.
Expected Benefits
Reduction in waste crime, improved governance of waste flows, identification of opportunities for reuse and recycling.
Functional Needs
A standardised description of a generic waste transaction that covers the following (currently most paper-based) transaction types, thus allowing data to be readily exchanged between systems.
Ok, this is certainly an interesting challenge, a data standard as part of a fix for a bigger problem. Would other departments other than DEFRA use this standard? The open standards process generally selects standards for cross government use. We also look to find an existing standard that is already in use. What is out there already that could be used?
I had a brief conversation in the summer with folks from Open Data Manchester about their waste data standard https://github.com/OpenDataManchester/KnoWaste which alerted me to this issue.
This blog post gives some background. https://defradigital.blog.gov.uk/2019/05/13/smart-waste-tracking-challenge-are-we-any-closer-to-solutions/
Thanks we will look at the Manchester work.
We are one of the companies in the DEFRA blog post!
Please feel free to build on the prototype standards work we did on Phase 1. Also you might be interested in the work being developed through the ONS/DEFRA/BEIS National Materials Datahub. Very keen to support best practice in the development of an open standard that reflects the reality of the waste pathway for all users. Email on profile.
The GDS GovTech Catalyst team is also very interested in progressing this standard - we feel that an open, ratified standard is an important part of managing the overall problem of waste tracking in the UK.
To answer an earlier question, we have project representation from the Environment Agency sister agencies in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland who are willing to adopt the standard, so it would be a cross-government application, not just EA in England. There are also potential use cases for BEIS, as the data relates to parts of the energy and climate change agenda.
We happily worked with OpenDataManchester (and JulianIstar!) in the first phase of the project, and would be happy to build on the KnoWaste project, but other suppliers on the project are already starting to do some detailed user research with waste producers and waste carriers to start to determine how this standard would be used by the 100,000 regulated entities in the waste carrying ecosystem. Perhaps we could keep discussing, @Lawrence-G.
