Think about how much of your business you measure.
Sales. Labour. Energy. Fuel. Stock. Website traffic. Delivery times. Customer acquisition.
Now try answering another question:
Not how many bins were collected. Not what the waste contract costs. What materials actually left the business, how much was there, and what ultimately happened to them?
For many businesses, that is a much harder question.
For decades, waste has largely existed at the end of the operational chain. Something is purchased, used, consumed or manufactured. Whatever is left goes into a container. A lorry arrives. The container is emptied.
Job done.
But across Northern Ireland, the wider UK and Ireland, something interesting is happening.
Waste is becoming increasingly measurable.
And that could change the way businesses think about it entirely.
A waste container might not look particularly insightful.
But think about what can end up inside one.
Unused materials. Packaging. Damaged stock. Food. Cardboard. Plastics. Manufacturing offcuts. Rejected products. Disposable equipment.
Each tells a small story about what has happened elsewhere in a business.
Repeated at scale, those stories can potentially raise useful questions.
Why are we disposing of so much packaging?
Are we buying more material than we need?
Are our containers the right size for what we’re producing?
Could something currently treated as waste have another use?
Are we paying to manage materials that could have been avoided in the first place?
That doesn’t mean every bin is hiding a revolutionary cost-saving opportunity.
It does mean that what leaves a business can sometimes tell us something about what is happening inside it.
Historically, getting a clear picture of that information hasn’t always been straightforward.
That’s beginning to change.
DAERA has commissioned one of the most interesting pieces of waste research Northern Ireland has seen in some time.
Throughout 2026, a survey managed on its behalf by WRAP has been collecting information from 1,500 commercial and industrial businesses across Northern Ireland.
Businesses are being asked what types of waste they produced during 2024, how much they produced and what ultimately happened to it.
The final report, expected in February 2027, is intended to provide a much clearer picture of the waste produced by Northern Irish businesses and help inform recycling performance, climate targets and future waste infrastructure.
There’s an interesting implication here.
At the same time that businesses have become increasingly sophisticated at measuring almost every other part of their operations, we’re still improving our understanding of something as fundamental as the materials they throw away.
And that’s not the only thing changing.
Northern Ireland is also moving towards mandatory Digital Waste Tracking.
The idea is relatively straightforward: replace fragmented and paper-based waste records with a digital system for recording waste movements.
Phase 1 entered public beta for waste receivers in April 2026 and is due to become mandatory for them in Northern Ireland from January 2027. Phase 2, covering the rest of the waste industry, is expected to enter public beta in spring 2027, with mandatory use currently planned for October 2027.
On the surface, that sounds like an administrative change.
And to an extent, it is.
But step back from the regulation itself and there’s a much bigger trend taking place.
Waste is becoming data.
Something that has traditionally been documented through fragmented systems and paperwork is moving towards greater digital traceability.
And better information creates the possibility of better questions.
Imagine a business discovers that a particular waste stream is consistently larger than expected.
The immediate question might be:
How do we dispose of this more efficiently?
But perhaps that shouldn’t always be the first question.
Maybe it should be:
Why are we producing so much of it in the first place?
That’s a subtle but important difference.
For a retailer, large quantities of discarded packaging might prompt a conversation about suppliers.
For a manufacturer, recurring offcuts or rejected materials might raise questions about processes.
For a hospitality business, food waste data could provide another perspective on purchasing and stock management.
For an office or commercial site, consistently under- or over-utilised containers could suggest that collection arrangements deserve another look.
Waste data doesn’t automatically provide the answer to any of those questions.
But it can help businesses know which questions are worth asking.
And that represents a change from thinking purely about waste disposal towards thinking about resource efficiency.
Packaging provides an especially clear example.
Under the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging system, producers can be responsible for the costs associated with managing household packaging once it becomes waste.
From 2026/27, those disposal fees are also being modulated according to recyclability.
Packaging is assessed as red, amber or green. Red-rated packaging — the least recyclable — attracts a higher share of the relevant fee, while green-rated packaging receives a reduction.
The modulation factor applied to red-rated material is scheduled to rise from 1.2 in 2026/27, to 1.6 in 2027/28 and 2.0 in 2028/29.
In other words, the characteristics of something before it becomes waste can increasingly affect its economics.
That’s an important shift.
Waste management is no longer only a conversation about what happens at the end of a product’s life.
Increasingly, it’s connected to decisions made much earlier, design, purchasing, packaging, procurement and resource use.
This isn’t unique to Northern Ireland or Great Britain.
The Republic of Ireland’s Circular Economy Strategy 2026–2028 explicitly connects better use of materials with productivity, innovation, competitiveness and resilience.
It also identifies digitalisation, including traceability and resource-optimisation tools, as an enabler of a more circular economy.
The individual rules and systems differ between jurisdictions, and businesses shouldn’t assume that legislation applying in Great Britain or the Republic of Ireland automatically applies in Northern Ireland.
But the direction of travel is remarkably similar.
Know more about materials.
Know where they go.
Keep valuable resources in use for longer.
Reduce what becomes waste in the first place.
That changes the conversation.
For years, the most obvious number attached to commercial waste has been the collection price.
That number will obviously continue to matter.
But perhaps businesses should be asking for more.
What are we producing?
How much?
Where is it coming from?
Where does it go?
Could we prevent some of it?
Could we separate it differently?
Are our services actually suited to what our business produces today?
And what could the answers tell us about the wider operation?
Northern Ireland’s waste sector is going to change considerably over the next few years. Digital tracking, producer responsibility, recycling ambitions and better commercial waste data are all part of that transition. DAERA’s wider resources and waste work also points toward increased recycling, greater resource efficiency and a more circular economy.
There will inevitably be new reporting requirements and processes to understand.
But focusing solely on compliance risks missing the more interesting opportunity.
Better waste information shouldn’t just help the waste industry understand waste.
It could help businesses understand themselves.
Because the question of the next few years may not simply be:
“Where does our waste go?”
It might be: