Sustainability

Many scrap metal recyclers and vehicle dismantling businesses across Scotland currently operate under the Paragraph 45 Waste Management Licensing Exemption.  As Waste Management Licensing transitions to EASR, operators should begin planning for the replacement environmental authorisation that will apply to their business.    What activities does Paragraph 45 cover?  Paragraph 45 typically applies to:  Storage of scrap metal   […]

Construction and civil engineering projects frequently rely on Waste Management Licensing Exemptions to recover suitable waste materials.  Two of the most widely used are Paragraph 9 and Paragraph 19.  As Scotland transitions to EASR, operators should begin reviewing how these activities will be authorised in future.    Paragraph 9  Paragraph 9 generally applies to the use of suitable waste for:  Land restoration  

Many recycling and waste businesses across Scotland currently operate under Paragraph 11 or Paragraph 48 Waste Management Licensing Exemptions.  Under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations (EASR), these Simple Waste Exemptions are being replaced by EASR Registrations.  Existing simple exemptions will no longer apply after 1 November 2026, meaning operators must obtain the appropriate EASR Registration if they wish to continue operating.    Paragraph 11  Paragraph 11 applies

The way exempt waste activities are regulated in Scotland is changing.  As part of the implementation of the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations (EASR), the existing system of Waste Management Licensing (WML) Exemptions is being replaced by a new environmental authorisation framework.  If your business currently relies on a waste exemption, now is the time to

Garden waste permit charges across Scotland in 2026 have continued to rise, with local councils once again increasing fees, tightening permit rules and further diverging in the level of service provided to residents. What was once a largely universal council service has now become a postcode lottery, with households paying significantly different amounts for very

The first three posts covered the ground DWT is built on — the three parties and two transfers of any movement, what a transfer note records, and the blind spot in the regulator’s current quarterly-return visibility. This post is about the first wave of the rollout: Phase 1. Who’s in it, when it bites, and

The first two posts in this series stayed on familiar ground: three parties, two transfers, one record per transfer, and what that record has to contain. All of that is the system as it stands today. This post is about what’s changing — but to understand what Digital Waste Tracking adds, you have to understand

In the last post we established that a waste transfer note is a record of a transfer between two parties, that both parties carry the duty to keep it, and — importantly — that Digital Waste Tracking doesn’t make it go away. The note still has to exist. So it’s worth knowing exactly what has

Before anyone can have a sensible conversation about Digital Waste Tracking, it’s worth getting clear on what it actually does — and what it doesn’t. There’s a common misreading that DWT replaces the waste transfer note. It doesn’t. The transfer note still has to exist between the two parties to a transfer, digital or paper,

The Environment Agency has published new interim guidance setting out how Incinerator Bottom Ash Aggregate (IBAA) can be sampled and tested as an alternative to undertaking a full waste classification assessment under WM3 technical guidance.   The protocol applies from 1 April 2026 and was published by the Environment Agency on 7 May 2026. It establishes a nationally