Guidance

Identify who supplies your materials facility

Published 11 December 2025

Applies to England and Wales

© Crown copyright 2025

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/materials-facilities-waste-sampling-and-reporting/identify-who-supplies-your-materials-facility

If you operate a materials facility, you need to know who your suppliers are because you must sample waste from each supplier separately.

Who may be a supplier

The following may be suppliers to your facility:

  • the operator of another materials facility who transfers waste material to your materials facility from their facility (even when both facilities are operated by the same legal entity)
  • a council acting as a waste collection authority (WCA) - the WCA remains the supplier even when they have outsourced their waste collections or when the waste material has passed through another waste facility that is not a materials facility
  • if waste material comes from a source that is not a WCA or the operator of another materials facility, the person or organisation who has collected the waste material is the supplier
  • if the collector of the material is not known, the person or organisation who has delivered the waste materials to your facility is the supplier
  • where waste material is received from a household waste recycling centre (HWRC), the supplier is the organisation that holds the environmental permit for the HWRC (usually either a local council acting as a waste disposal authority (WDA) or a contractor acting on their behalf)

Where waste material is received from 2 separate materials facilities that are part of the same legal entity, the supplier would be the same for both.

Example 1: identifying suppliers

A waste transfer station (WTS) receives waste material from WCA 1 and WCA 2.

WCA 1 collects waste material from households and businesses together in the same round before delivering to the WTS.

WCA 2 only collects waste materials from households.

The WTS also receives waste material from a private waste collection company which has been collected from multiple local businesses.

The WTS receives waste from 3 suppliers:

  • WCA 1
  • WCA 2
  • the private waste collection company

These are not suppliers:

  • households and the individual businesses whose waste is collected together by WCA 1
  • households whose waste is collected by WCA 2
  • the individual businesses whose waste is collected by the private waste collection company

Example 2: identifying suppliers

A materials facility receives waste directly from WCA 3 and receives waste from the WTS in the previous example.

WCA 3 collects waste material from households and businesses together in the same round before delivering to the materials facility.

The WTS receives waste collected from WCA 1 and WCA 2, as well as multiple businesses by a private waste collection company and bulks them together before transferring them to the materials facility.

The materials facility receives waste from 2 suppliers:

  • WCA 3
  • the WTS

These are not suppliers:

  • WCA 1
  • WCA 2
  • households and the individual businesses whose waste is collected together by WCA 3
  • the individual businesses whose waste is collected by the private waste collection company

Example 3: identifying supplier

A waste transfer station (WTS A) receives waste material from another facility (Facility 1). WTS A and part of Facility 1 are materials facilities.

Facility 1 contains:

  • a household waste recycling centre (HWRC) operated on behalf of a waste disposal authority (this part of Facility 1 is not within the materials facility)
  • a waste transfer station that receives and consolidates waste material from 2 waste collection authorities (this part of Facility 1 is within the materials facility)
  • a waste sorting area that sorts waste material into specified output material (this part of Facility 1 is within the materials facility)

Facility 1 operates under a single environmental permit covering all 3 parts of the facility.

For WTS A, Facility 1 is the supplier of all waste material received from this facility. Because part of Facility 1 is a materials facility, they are the supplier of the waste material from the parts of their facility that are included within their materials facility. Because they hold the permit for operating the HWRC, they are also the supplier for waste material from that part of their facility.

Back to top