Waste management software: follow the shipment and its evidence

Define the waste job before selecting software

Waste product scopes to investigate

Tekmon pays for a sponsored placement (above); its place in this list follows the same rule as every entry. How lists are ordered

Same rule for every product: tagged “Waste Management” or “Environmental Management”, with a sourced waste or manifest capability in its record, or one the vendor stated to us, labelled as vendor-stated. 11 qualify; the first 8 are shown, then the other 3.

• ERA-EHS

  Documented: Container-level chemical inventory. Source: era-environmental.com

• Mapistry

  Documented: Waste manifest tracking. Source: mapistry.com

• Wastebits

  Waste profiles, approvals, manifests and related scale records, for generators, transporters and receiving facilities coordinating operational waste records, particularly a US EPA e-Manifest workflow. Demonstrate each party's permissions, status mapping, post-signature correction and export; offline use and equivalent UK/EU interfaces are not established. Source: wastebits.com

• Chemical Safety (EMS)

  Documented: Hazardous waste. Source: chemicalsafety.com

• Tekmon

  Documented: Waste data capture and reporting. Source: tekmon.com

• IsoMetrix

  Documented: Environmental performance. Source: isometrix.com

• Sphera

  Waste volume, shipping and disposal data within environmental accounting, alongside air and water data with reporting and data governance. Scope the Waste Management application separately from Health and Safety, Corporate Sustainability and LCA, and require the actual shipment-to-report handoff and supporting documents. Source: sphera.com

• VelocityEHS

  Documented: Environmental compliance and obligation tracking. Source: ehs.com

Keep the jurisdiction with the requirement

The US EPA e-Manifest guidance describes tracking manifested waste from the generator to the designated receiving facility, including signature and correction roles. A vendor's EPA e-Manifest connection is relevant to that US workflow; it does not establish an equivalent European or UK connection.

The European Commission's Waste Framework Directive overview describes additional controls and records for hazardous waste through disposal or recovery. Specify the actual countries, waste classification, parties, local forms and receiving-site permissions before evaluating an implementation. This guide does not provide a universal legal checklist or filing deadline.

The Directive's Article 35 is where the record itself comes from: permitted treatment operators, producers of hazardous waste, and anyone who collects, transports, deals in or brokers hazardous waste professionally keep a chronological record of its quantity, nature and origin and, where relevant, its destination, collection frequency, transport mode and treatment method, and each Member State is to run an electronic registry for the hazardous waste data. We read that text on legislation.gov.uk, which shows it as it stood on 31 December 2020. EUR-Lex did not serve the Directive's pages on 21 October 2026, so that day we compared it with the EU's consolidated text of 16 October 2025 from the EU Publications Office: Article 35 reads the same. A software record that cannot hold those fields per movement cannot produce the register; the national systems that receive the data differ by country.

UK digital waste tracking: every load a permitted site receives, reported within two working days

Checked on GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk on 21 October 2026. Since 1 October 2026 the operator of a permitted or licensed site in England or Wales that receives controlled waste must enter every load in Defra's Report receipt of waste service. The duty comes from the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/729) and the Digital Waste Tracking (Wales) Regulations 2026 (WSI 2026/105). The England text sets the deadline at the end of the second working day after the day the load arrives, gives the operator one month from finding an error to correct it, and sets a fee of £26 a year; each accepted entry gets a digital waste record number. GOV.UK's guidance (last updated 19 October 2026) covers permitted sites on the same site where the waste is produced, and describes exceptions for household waste recycling centres and a written-record route for operators who qualify as digitally excluded.

Schedule 1 of the England regulations lists what each entry holds, among other items: the receiving site's permit number, the date and time of receipt, the carrier and its registration number, any broker or dealer, the transport mode and, by road, each vehicle registration, a description, the six-digit waste code, the weight for each code with its unit and whether it was weighed or estimated, the R or D operation, the containers, the consignment note code for hazardous waste, hazardous properties, persistent organic pollutants and the physical form. Paper continues: GOV.UK says that until further notice waste transfer notes, Annex VII forms and hazardous waste consignment notes are still completed, and permit waste returns and hazardous waste consignee returns are still submitted.

Defra's policy paper says this first phase is for receiving sites. A business that only sends its waste elsewhere is not the one entering the data, but its transfer and consignment notes already carry most of the facts the receiving site needs. Our waste register and transfer record template keeps them per load with the note reference, and points to the digital waste record number where your own site receives waste.

Who reports to the digital service, and from when

What the digital duty changes on a software shortlist

GOV.UK's Report receipt of waste page describes two ways to report, which can be combined: waste software connected to Defra's Receipt of Waste API, using an API code issued to each registered organisation, or Defra's own spreadsheet template, which may not be replaced by your own spreadsheet or reformatted. The policy paper calls the spreadsheet a temporary route and expects it to stay until at least October 2027. Defra's list of compatible software (updated 16 October 2026) names products that have integrated with the API and passed 14 production approval test scenarios. Some are listed as exempt for certain scenarios (GOV.UK gives hazardous waste as an example), the list is not exhaustive, and buying from it is at the buyer's own risk.

On 21 October 2026 we compared that list with the products profiled in this directory and found none of them among the listed providers' products (the one entry named SAP is listed under another company as its provider, not under SAP). That shows only that Defra had not listed them, not that they cannot report. A receiving site in England or Wales can ask any vendor which listed product it would rely on and which test scenarios it is exempt from, whether the digital waste record number is stored against each load, how an entry still unsent near the end of the second working day is shown, how a correction inside the one-month limit is recorded, and how a load received during an outage is kept as a written record and entered afterwards.

Demo case: a receipt exists, but the evidence is incomplete

Use fictional shipment SHIP-017 for an approved stream at Plant A. Keep its internal shipment ID, waste-profile revision and any regulatory tracking ID as distinct fields. Do not enter this example into a live regulatory service.

The declared quantity is 1,200 kg. The receiving scale ticket records 1.18 metric tonnes, equivalent to 1,180 kg: a 20 kg difference. Preserve both original values and units, the conversion and the review decision. This arithmetic is a reconciliation exercise, not a legal discrepancy threshold or a finding that waste was lost.

For the demo, leave the receiving signature pending and withhold the treatment/recovery evidence your buying team requires. Then introduce a second receipt with no shipment ID. A useful system keeps those gaps visible instead of inferring completion from an uploaded file or matching a receipt on weight alone.

Review the evidence one record at a time

A status label needs an event, a system and an owner

Wastebits' hybrid-status table distinguishes its own status from EPA status. A receipt awaiting the facility signature remains In Transit in Wastebits while EPA shows Ready for Signature; facility signing maps to Received and Signed. Read those labels as workflow events, not proof of subsequent treatment.

The correction guide describes permission and acknowledgement requirements after signing, including a facility-user step in RCRAInfo. Ask the vendor to demonstrate a correction in the proposed test environment and identify who owns each outstanding action. A saved local edit is not proof that every external record and signature is reconciled.

Five demonstrations using the same shipment

Test the export as the party who needs it

Wastebits' cited export instructions apply to facility portal/site administrators at facility-site level. They do not establish the same export for a generator or transporter. In the demo, request both an administrator export and the generator's evidence package, including linked IDs, source quantities, corrections, signatures and attachments.

For every candidate, identify ownership of missing documents, retention and access after the contract ends. Test offline behavior separately from downloading a PDF. No complete disconnected Wastebits capture/signature workflow was verified in the reviewed sources.

Request a quote for the actual waste workflow