We were really lucky to be joined online by two waste data experts for our most recent Liverpool City Region Data Community of Practice in October and you can find the full video at the end of this blog.
Rubbish data
Sophie Walker, COO of Southport’s Dsposal, discussed the various ways that criminal activity can be identified in the waste industry, including via responses to the National waste crime survey 2025, where people said they believe 20% of waste is managed illegally and 20% of waste operators engage in illegal activity.
She also highlighted a European Commission report that suggested 64% of the UK’s hazardous waste disappears from the legitimate waste sector, likely by businesses trying to minimise their costs.
“Having better data around waste management and people being able to understand what’s going on is really key to helping tackle this,” Sophie said. “But the data quality is pretty terrible.”
She highlighted a number of tools to help people dig into available waste data, including the Environment Agency’s Public Registers of waste companies, WasteDataFlow, where local authorities must report the waste they manage, and the Waste Data Interrogator, which holds the quarterly reports from waste sites submitted to the Environment Agency. But she explored issues and inconsistencies with the data on all of these platforms.
Sophie highlighted that mandatory digital waste tracking came into force in the UK on 1 October, which she is broadly supportive of, but she also flagged that a convicted waste criminal was listed as a compatible software provider when the government website went live. Her presentation in the video below included a demo of Dsposal’s compliance tool, which you can have a play with if you sign up here.
Better data
Tim Hobbs, CEO of Bartec Municipal Technologies, works with local authorities to design bin lorry routes, and manage vehicles and people, so has huge access to data, much that is accidentally generated, that can tell us about what is happening with our waste.
He highlighted that waste and recycling is one of the UK’s most dangerous jobs, where you are 15-times more likely to be killed than the average British worker, and with limited progress made to improve safety. He also flagged limited reporting of incidents, meaning they never appear in the data.
“It’s partly why we have wheeled bins now, not the big metal things that the guys used to throw over their shoulders,” he explained. “It’s partly why we moved away from sack collections because they have sharps that stab people in the legs… and it’s improved partly by measuring it.”
He also explored the data behind the challenges some local authorities have with assisted collections, where bins are collected for people who can’t do it themselves, and demonstrated how Bartec designs the most efficient routes. Reversing is the most dangerous part of a bin lorry’s journey, so they endeavour to design these moments out of routes.
“A bin truck to run costs… at least £200,000 a year… if we get good data, and we do a good routing process… there’s some really massive savings.”
He is in favour of councils working together to understand more of their common, and different, challenges, highlighting where principles and data like this could be used across different council services.
The next LCR Data Community event is a ‘show and tell’ on Wednesday 18 November at the Bluecoat where anyone can volunteer to share five minutes on a data project or issue you’re working on right now. Get your ticket here and email Kirsty to secure your slot.