Documents & codes
What is a trade waste agreement?
A trade waste agreement is the contract between a business and a collector setting out what waste will be collected, how often, in what containers, and at what price.
It is the commercial document behind the compliance one. The transfer notes evidence individual movements; the agreement evidences that a lawful arrangement exists at all, which is what an inspector looks for first.
Container type and frequency are where these agreements most often stop matching reality. A business whose volumes have doubled is either overfilling containers or paying for extra uplifts that nobody has put in the agreement.
For a collector, the agreement is also where waste descriptions are agreed. Getting a specific description at sign-up is far easier than getting one from a driver at the kerbside.
What goes wrong in practice
- Agreements that have never been revisited as the customer's volumes changed.
- Waste descriptions left generic at sign-up and inherited by every note afterwards.
- Containers overfilled because the frequency in the agreement no longer fits.