Next month, businesses from the food and beverage sector will be able to start saving time, money and resource thanks to edoc – the UK’s innovative new national online system to record waste transfers.
The system has been in development, which included user testing by businesses in the sector, throughout 2013 and is on track to launch in January 2014.
Edoc (electronic duty of care) – is set to transform the cumbersome task of creating and storing paper waste transfer notes (WTN) by providing a free, modern, quick and easy online alternative for fulfilling this aspect of the legal duty of care for waste.
Edoc will go live from 23 January 2014 and will allow businesses across the UK to create, share, edit, sign and record all waste transfers electronically, significantly reducing administrative tasks and in some cases saving businesses up to 50% of the cost associated with the creation, storage and retrieval of WTNs.
Over two thirds of large and medium-sized food and drink businesses have already shown their support for the system, with 67 per cent of those questioned saying they were keen to use edoc when it goes live. More than half (55 per cent) of smaller food and drink businesses said they too would be interested in transferring.
Bernard Amos, CEO at Helistrat, which provides waste management services for a variety of restaurants and food halls as well as food retailers such as Marks & Spencer, said: “The edoc system is a brilliant idea and I’d encourage all companies to take it up.
“More and more we are moving towards paper-free ways of doing business and this makes perfect sense. It’s quicker, easier to trace and will help prevent fraud by removing the opportunity for people to take advantage of the revenue from waste. It will also be hugely time-saving. We have well over a quarter of a million paper WTNs that we have to scan and it will save our teams a great deal of time when it all goes electronic.”
Edoc is being developed under a four year project co-financed by the European Commission (LIFE+). The project is being implemented by the Environment Agency in partnership with the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM), Reconomy, WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme), Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and Welsh Government. It also has the full support of Defra and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
Edoc
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