[00:00:12] Barry O'Kane: Welcome to HappyPorch Radio, the circular economy technology podcast. 

I'm Barry O'Kane and this is Season 10, “Technology Isn't Magic”. We're exploring what happens when circular economy tools meet the reality of how organisations and people actually make decisions. 

My guest today is Tom Passmore, CIO and founder of Dsposal, which is a company that's been making sense of UK waste data for 10 years.

I always really enjoy Tom's passion and dedication to one of the most important, while perhaps unglamorous, areas in our society, our waste. And as Tom says, much of the time we decide we don't want something, we all stop caring. Things go to that magic away place. It goes to the bin and it's just gone. Yet what actually happens there is really vital that we get it right as a society. 

In our conversation, Tom explains how and why data, when used properly, can have that change. 

The UK has reasonably good structured waste data, and Tom describes how when organisations do start using that data then the questions change. They start by asking “what” and “where” about their waste, and then they move on to asking “why” and that shift is where real change begins 

We get into the three public datasets underpinning Tom's products, what a customer portal that sat untouched for years tells us about the pace of behavior change, and what Tom sees as the power and potential in all this data. 

As usual, full transcript and links at happyporchradio.com. 

So let's meet Tom.

[00:01:39] Tom Passmore: I'm Tom, the CIO and co-founder of Dsposal. We've been around for 10 years, which shocks me. Shocks and awes me. People seem to like to pay for some of the stuff we do, which is nice. So what we do is we build tech for, I always say the waste industry, but actually it's for anyone that interacts with waste. So that might be waste management companies or complex waste producers or simple waste producers. And we just try to make the whole process a lot easier for people and make it easier for them to be compliant as well.

So just, we're a web platform that deals with waste at the end of the day and tries to then tie all of that together with the circular economy.

[00:02:16] Barry O'Kane: Cool. Awesome. And thanks again for joining me again. 

I love the fact that we get to talk about waste, which is actually not very exciting for a lot of people. But so important, right? That's something that I've heard you say and I feel like we've talked before about your sort of background and experience in this sector and how important it is, and yet it feels a challenging area to work in as well.

Is that fair?

[00:02:37] Tom Passmore: Yeah, no it's definitely- it's challenging because it's unglamorous.

I think very few people wake up when they're 16 and think, "I want a career in waste." I think we've tried to make it sexier recently by talking about the circular economy or resources or recycling, but it comes down to actually, we have to deal with the things that people no longer want.

And I think actually, that's quite interesting because in the past when we've talked about waste, what I've really realised is as soon as someone's made that connection in their head that they don't want it anymore, it's just dead to them. Like literally, it's just like, right, throw that in the bin and it's gone.

There might be some emotion...

[00:03:12] Barry O’Kane: The magic away place, yeah. 

[00:03:14] Tom Passmore: Yeah, the magical way place. And I think you see this with people just with like historical stuff. So they're like, Oh, I've gone through this box of leaflets that I picked up when I was 18 or when I was 24, and I've carried them around for the last, I don't know, 20 years." But as soon as you go, "Actually, I wanna get rid of it," all that nostalgia's gone. And that's for everything. 

And we're producing more and more waste purely because we're creating more and more stuff, and even if you want to dress it up as recycling or as resources, at the end of the day, someone doesn't want this stuff anymore, and they're giving it to somebody else. And I think there is some issues there because as soon as you don't want it, you don't care. So that's when it goes to the wrong place, so you don't really care what happens to it next. But it is important because every single thing we've mined, we've extracted, we've taken from the earth ends up as stuff, probably then ends up as waste. And understanding that, understanding what that was, that the whole life cycle of that product then gives us real good insights to what it is and could be used for in the future.

And I just, I think at a data level, that really excites me.

[00:04:19] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I started with that slightly tongue-in-cheek question about it being unglamorous. 

I can hear what you're describing there. And as you say, most of us in everyday life think, "Oh, here's a thing. It's like now it's gone. I stop thinking about it." And yet we can see direct impacts of where that stuff goes in, on the roads, in the landfills, in the international trade, in waste on the streets. And that's even just the surface level stuff. And this is why the conversation's also fun, the technology and data area that you work in is really interesting, I think. My assumption is that's a difficult, messy data problem. We can explore that a little bit more about how that little journey you went around of the kind of data that you're seeing and the products you're looking to build to where you are now.

[00:04:57] Tom Passmore: Yeah. It's really interesting around the data piece because, like pun intended, like everyone talks about waste data being rubbish and it is, to be honest, like the quantity of the data is very small. Like I've worked in the NHS before, I've worked in different, like, environments that our data volume is small.

People like to throw around words like big data. We don't have big data in the waste industry. We just don't. Like we just don't need the tooling for that. Like, it's fine. It's almost fine in Excel. It's perfectly fine in SQL. We don't need anything more than that. 

But the fact that we have some is leaps and bounds ahead of most other countries in the world. So we have something that we don't treat as a resource and then bang, like bang the drum of we need to do this better, but never use the data that we've got. And that's what one of the things we're trying to do is go, we've got open data being released by the Environment Agency, so by the government. We can connect that up to other data sets from the government or other places, and then actually add richness to give people information. And then we can pick holes in it and go, " Oh, there's a gap here. There's a void. There's a null. There's a dark space."

And then we go and talk to the Environment Agency or DEFRA or whomever, and then they fix it, because only by using data and understanding it and understanding the holes and talking to the people that release this, is it going to get any better. And once you start doing that, then you can start mapping trends to be like, where is this waste coming from?

What has changed? What happened during COVID compared to  post-COVID compared to pre-COVID? And then you can start really understanding what is happening and when policies come in. So we've got DRS, Deposit Return Scheme, coming in. Is that gonna have any impact on aluminum or on plastic packaging? Is it gonna have any impact on glass, which isn't part of DRS?

We know this. We could look at that and investigate that because we have, as a nation, like 10 years of pretty okay data, and going forward, that quality is only going to improve if we start using it. So that's what we do. We use this tech to do that.

[00:07:02] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. So the subtitle or the title of this season of the podcast is "Technology Isn't Magic." 

[00:07:06] Tom Passmore: What? What, Barry? What?

[00:07:08] Barry O'Kane: I picked that from based on a couple of conversations and we've talked about earlier in the season. But what I'm interested in is that story there.

As you said, data collected sitting somewhere is never gonna have anything. It's connecting that to the real world and the people and the businesses and then working out how to use it, and that's the power. But it's also the difficult part, I assume. 

So let's take a step back and you said, so the UK being one of the few countries where there is data, you said. What does that data look like? What is it? Is that reporting? What does it actually talk about?

[00:07:35] Tom Passmore: Yeah. So there's three main datasets that we use as Dsposal. So one's called the Public Register. So the Public Register is every licensed and permitted waste site in England. So if you want to treat waste, if you want to deal with waste, you have to say to the Environment Agency, "We want to treat waste," and the Environment Agency give you a permit, and you go away and do that.

So we use that. That gives you a physical location. Then the second dataset that we use is called Waste Data Interrogator. So this is released annually, and that is a report released by the Environment Agency that says, " Those facilities that we license, that we permit, they provided us with data about what they received and what they removed from site. Here you go." They've aggregated it up a little bit, so you don't know exactly where it came from and where it went to, but you can get trends like how much aluminum to use the example from before. There's a specific code for aluminum, so then you can say how much aluminum went to this facility and how much did they move on to somewhere else. So you can look at that. 

And then the third dataset that we use is one called Waste Data Flow. Waste Data Flow is all about local authority waste. So that's generally household waste, but some other waste in there as well to basically say, what are citizens throwing out in their bins and then where does that waste go after it's left the local authority? So that dataset doesn't say it's come from me and my house here in Southport, but it does say that Sefton Council received this amount of waste in this quarter, and they sent it to these 24 different facilities. And then all we do as Dsposal is join those up to say this facility receives this amount of waste in total from Waste Data Interrogator. This is where they physically are from the Public Register, and this is what they received from local authorities and then where they sent it, municipal waste, after that. So then we can start getting a bit of a picture of where waste has come from, where waste went to, what happened to it, and then where it went after that.

So creating this flow, a web of waste data.

[00:09:41] Barry O'Kane: So thank you. That's really clear. And what does that look like in terms of the product? So we've got all this data. What I was thinking there is, you’re now beginning to build a bit of understanding and working out how to use the existing data. Talked about two things:

One, you talked about identifying the gaps, and then also the product that you have. Let's go to the product or products, built on that understanding, what problems do they solve? What are people benefiting from when they're working with the tools that you've created?

[00:10:06] Tom Passmore: Yeah. So first and foremost, it's where can waste go? So waste is complicated because you don't have nice easy terms like, I'm trying to think, AirPods I've got my AirPods, AirPod case. You can't type somewhere and go, "Where can I find AirPod case disposal?" Or something a little bit more random, like ceramic tiles from my loft. Not my loft, from my roof. Although, I think some of them are falling into my loft. That's a different problem. So we build tools to like, basically, so if you are typing that in, we know what code, waste code, and then because we know all of the facilities in England that accept that code, people can then go, "Oh, in my area, there's these…" I don't know, let's say 50 different companies that will accept that waste code. And then I can contact them and understand that they accept them. Then layered on top of that, I can say this is the information that they've chosen to give us about their other accreditations. 

So within waste, you have to have a lot of accreditations to let you know, like insurances, ISO 9001 about quality and environmental certificates, health and safety insurance, whatever. They put them on our site as well. So all the time building this layer of assurance around these facilities. So they're no longer just points in a data set. There are fully fleshed out organisations and sites that receive this waste, because it is genuinely quite difficult to find good outlets that takes waste.

Because linked to that, which we are seeing more and more, that you might have seen like in the BBC News, is the amount of illegal waste sites cropping up. And it is really genuinely difficult for the regulators, so the people that do this every day, for organisations, for local authorities, for homeowners, to know that the people they are talking to aren't actually legal. They will just happily take your money, take your waste, and then dump the waste somewhere else.

So we're just trying to demystify that and make that all a little bit easier with the technology.

[00:12:06] Barry O'Kane: So describe who your customers are because it sounds like there's two or three different types of people that would find that information useful.

[00:12:13] Tom Passmore: Yes. Yeah, so it's a problem we have because everyone produces waste. Like everyone, as in you do, I do, like, the NHS do, everyone in between does. So we basically can facilitate and work with everybody, which then makes our marketing a mess, if I'm honest. We haven't nailed our marketing at all. Basically our target market, the people that we like to work with the most and who actively work, like together is people who have complex waste management needs. So worked with universities, the NHS, private healthcare trusts, science parks and local authorities, but not their municipal waste, the other bits and pieces that they do. 

And then small to medium size waste management companies are able to use our software, help us improve it. We don't really cater towards the big operations. They are too big, they're too slow. They've got too many barriers in place. And also we're purely cloud-based and some of them just don't like that. They like their on-premkit. And also the one-man bands doesn't really work for them too well, as well. So we're getting to this nice space where, like in the middle, where it's quite complex waste, but then medium-sized businesses that help those companies deal with that.

[00:13:28] Barry O'Kane: Yeah. The obvious thing is compliance. I need to be able to show and prove, here's the things, here's the criteria on both sides of that, where the waste is going and so on. 

Is that the main driver or is there a genuine sort of underlying thing as well, like you were saying at the start, let's understand what's happening with waste in order to try and solve the problem better, and maybe move things up the chain?

[00:13:46] Tom Passmore: Yeah, so that is a good question because it's changed over like the last 10 years. To begin with, it was very much, purely about compliance. It was about - have they got insurance? Have they got this permit? Have they got 14,001 or whatever certificates? That's all that people cared about.

And then over time it's been like, "Oh, actually, like, where do they send their waste?" Be like, "Does this go to landfill?" Or is it like, "Oh I'd prefer it if this went to energy from waste." And now it's changing to be a little bit more like, " Well, I care about how far it's traveling and I care about actually, like I'd prefer to do reclamation rather than that. Actually, I don't want it to be dispersed afterwards." 

So the story changes based on that because that's the world that we're living in. Like that adapts and modifies and changes and I think that's what for me that makes it really interesting at that data level. Because the data hasn't changed really in the last 10 years. Like it's still the same reporting requirements, but it's how you change those views of that data to give people the insights they require from the same dataset. 

So that's what I enjoy as someone who likes data. So it changes over time.

[00:14:58] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, and that's a really interesting observation, because my thought process as you were describing that is that there's a, kind of, further up the process in terms of within those organisations, an attitude change that's saying we need to be able to demonstrate our impact or like our physical footprints. And so we're asking our waste, where does it go? How much is it? Can we improve that?" So that's really interesting to see that trickling down, if my assumption is correct, to see that trickling down to the work that you're doing and the actual details on the ground.

[00:15:25] Tom Passmore: Definitely. So we've got the compliance dashboard that anyone has access to, but we also have another bit of software purely for waste management companies, and there's like a customer portal that layers on top of that. And so that their, like our clients, our waste management company clients can give access to the data to their customers.

And what's interesting is this has been available for eight years and no one touched it with a barge pole. Like literally no one cared about it. 

And then after COVID, probably about three, four years ago, something like that, maybe even less, yeah, three years ago, we see the usage of that customer portal just accelerate, like just go up and it's about they want to see specific jobs, cool, that's fine. But then it's just "Actually, I wanna see this on our reporting platform. I wanna see this. I need this documentation. Is there a way that you can prove to me that this went to recovery, not to disposal?" And like really asking quite, almost quite technical questions about waste.

What's the difference between long-term storage and storage? What's the difference between... It's just oh, we can get into this, but actually you shouldn't know who I am because I'm from Dsposal. Talk to your waste management company. So yeah. And again, it is interesting seeing how this morphs and changes. Same dataset, like as in nothing's changed for our clients, nothing's changed. They still put the same information in. It's just the requirements that come on top of that have increased. 

[00:16:47] Barry O'Kane: And the tools that you have are helping them answer those questions without needing "I now need to go and answer a separate question in a whole way from everybody who's asking me."

[00:16:55] Tom Passmore: Yes, people are asking for more advanced analytics platforms as well. So we've started working with an organization called - started working with, sounds like we're best of friends. We buy a product off them, and they've heard of us through invoicing - called Metabase. And so they're like through open source. Basically, it's like Power BI, but not Microsoft, which is currently one of the only requisites I have for buying tech at the moment, is not Microsoft. And it's brilliant. Honestly, being able to just create that data set and go, "Here you go," and then have them just use this UI kit basically that sits on top of the data to then drill down.

It absolutely terrifies our clients because they're able to say, "Why was this job on this date this, like, lower than what was said over here?" But that for me is exactly what we should be doing with waste, because that instantly for me, that's turned waste into something you don't care about. Like I said at the beginning, you don't care about it. You feel like there's no emotional attachment to it too. Why are you drilling down so heavily into that? Is it because you care about this? Is it because you can see how this changes? And also when you start buying your client's clients into that infrastructure, that's when real change can happen.

Because then, like, this is how infrastructure changes to be like, actually, we wanna be sending more of our waste to this type of facility, not this type of facility. So more recycling rather than energy from waste or landfilling. So yeah. It's exciting. It's cool.

[00:18:22] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, and that ties back to what you were saying at the start about the data just sitting there, not doing anything. But if it's presented or available and people are able to ask the questions: One, I've seen this data, so now I'm becoming more aware, so I'm asking smarter questions as well as asking the questions in the first place.

[00:18:39] Tom Passmore: Yeah. So I think it starts by going, "What is this? It's only waste. I don't care about it," to, "Oh, I've seen this before. I know what these codes are.” Like last month it was 100 tons, the month before that was 95 tons. Why is it 120 tons this month? Oh, okay.

And then as soon as you start moving from those like "Who did this? Where did this go? What was this? How much did that cost?" to, " Why was that? Why did that change?" Like going into those why questions. The data can help answer, but doesn't answer it straight away. "Who was on the call with you today?" "Oh, it was Barry and Tom." "Great. Why were they on that call?" Oh, I literally, without context, I have no understanding. And I think that, the “why questions”, once you start having clients and clients' clients asking good “why questions” about data, that's when you start seeing changes appear. And I think going from not really caring to a bit of like how much “Cool. Oh, why?” That's the transition levels for me.

[00:19:38] Barry O'Kane: And that little example you gave before, we've had this big increase in waste and asking why can feed back into, let's talk about reduction and impact and not also the upstream costs, like did we buy something, is there a saving to be made as well. So yeah, fascinating in a way. 

So the other part was when you're talking about data holes, like gaps in the data. Have you got an example of, where on the same vein think, where like identifying the gaps feeds back into asking the “why” potentially?

[00:20:04] Tom Passmore: Yeah. I do actually, which wasn't queued up in any way, shape, or form, but this is brilliant. So I gave a talk at the North West Resource Forum last week in Kendal, and as part of that, gave a slideshow about waste, kind of thing. And so in Waste Data Interrogator, so this about where does waste go to facilities and what happens to it next, has all different codes in it.

And we have that for the last six years of reported data, so it goes up to 2024. We're expecting 2025 to come out in a few months. And in that data set, so in 2019, 2020, 2023 I missed some numbers out there. I'm not very good at numbers.  So from basically 2019 to 2023 the amount of waste for a specific type of code, which is basically waste generated by waste management companies, where it's just other stuff, the code for that has consistently gone down, consistently gone down, which is great. to me and to other people I've talked to about this signifies that we are getting better at classifying what is coming out of waste management sites, which is good because then you have better routes for it afterwards. But linked to that, when you look further into the data, as another aspect of Waste Data Interrogator, it tells you the region that waste came from.

So it's got Scotland, it's got Wales, it's got the North East, it's got London, it's got all the, like basically the countries, from outside of the UK, from Ireland, whatever. As we see this amount of waste going down, we see the amount of waste coming from unknown location increasing. And what I find fascinating about that is this, by definition, this waste stream is waste from a waste management company that is permitted, and if you are permitted, you have a location. How has another waste management company received this waste and not known where it's come from?

And that's increasing basically at the same rate that we are seeing more illegal waste sites operating. Causation, correlation, nothing to do with each other. So yeah, so then you start looking at these like void spaces to be like, "Why is that there? What's happening there?" That's really interesting for me. 

So there's other bits as well where you can see, like the Northwest produces like to a magnitude less waste for specific codes than London, and vice versa for other codes. And it's just, it's to do with classification. And then I find this interesting because then people are like, "Ooh, what about AI?"

And then you get into a whole world of magic, should we call it?

[00:22:42] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, that's really interesting. And like you said, identifying and digging into those gaps. Now, I can hear, and obviously you have this huge depth and many years of not just passion and interest in the data and the problem,

[00:22:52] Tom Passmore: Suffering as well. Suffering, yeah.

[00:22:53] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, okay. Through suffering comes knowledge. But it's that understanding that I think is really key. Like you can't explain or understand or spot those trends or build the products and understand the problems without that depth of understanding.

[00:23:05] Tom Passmore: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because I'm gonna say with waste, but actually within any industry, within any aspect of any industry, there's complexity there. And from the outside, people are like, "Oh, you can just click your fingers and it will change."

And actually, it takes some time to realize, oh, there's actually, there's political change that's happening, and there's consultations that are going on, and people are trapped in these long-term like situations, and these people have moved into the market that have upset it in this way. And then you really have to understand the landscape and the topography before you can just click your fingers and it to change.

10 years ago, we thought, honestly, we thought we could come in, revolutionise the way that everyone did waste. And now with the advent of digital waste tracking, which is something the government are bringing out at the moment, and AI, we are seeing our 10-year-old younger selves walking into the market being like, "Don't worry, we've got this, guys. It'll be great." And then it's just "Oh, we were you 10 years ago. Oh God, were we this embarrassing?” Yes, we were.

Because yeah, people think it's easy to change these things, but you need to have the struggle. You need to have the battle scars. You need to have people being angry with you for not understanding and having quite difficult conversations because that's when you know that actually you are part of the solution because you…

[00:24:24] Barry O’Kane: Part of the change..

[00:24:25] Tom Passmore: Part of the change…because no one's talking to you, you have no power.

People get really angry at me, and people get really annoyed when our tech fails because tech fails. Tech fails, Barry, I don't know if you knew. Yeah. And they get really annoyed a because it means people are using it.

[00:24:41] Barry O'Kane: That's really fascinating. As you said, the sort of naivety, and I think that's why I was so interested in this, the “technology isn’t magic” part. When a tool or tools are as powerful as the AI tools, which are amazing in terms of their impact and the functionality they can do. But you still need that depth of data and understanding before the tools can actually have an impact. Like it's that part that's really important.

Let's just segue really quickly. I wanted to talk about digital waste tracking, just quickly, because we're in the middle right now of this big change from the UK government about how waste is gonna be tracked and the requirements. And I know there's a huge topic there, but really I've got a couple of questions. 

One of the intentions of this introduction is to tighten up on things like illegal waste dumping, illegal sites and so on. And then hopefully, as you said, to increase data and fill in the gaps in order to be able to facilitate policy changes that can then reduce and have some of the changes that we're talking about. So my very short question is it working? Is it going to work?

[00:25:33] Tom Passmore: Yes, it is good. As in if you follow me online so if you follow me basically only on LinkedIn, because I think all of the rest have gone the wrong way. But if you follow me on LinkedIn you'll think I'm really cynical about digital waste tracking.

But actually I am very positive about it. I think it has the possibility to really do all of the things that I think you and I want tech to be able to deliver. So basically, it asks those physical sites that I was talking about before to give data to DEFRA within 48 hours of it being received on site.

So what did you receive? Where did it come from? What's your plans for it next? As soon as it arrives in your site, tell them, like great. And I'm like, brilliant, So I've talked about Waste Data Interrogator before. This is provided. You provide that once every three months to the Environment Agency, and I think in that three-month gap, you can do some reconciliation of your data, which I think is because you just basically have a spreadsheet and be like, "Whoa, those numbers are too high for my permit. Let's reduce them down a bit."

Whereas if you're doing it within 48 hours of each transaction happening, you have no oversight of being able to make those changes on the fly. So I think that's a really good thing. I think there's some critical missteps they've done. No, that's unfair. I think they've done some critical mistakes which happens during project builds that because they're doing it agilely, they'll be able to fix down the road.

So one of them, and I think this is a major concern for me, is that you're able to put information, you can put data into the system, Defra system, but no one can get any data out of it. Defra and the Environment Agency can. But within waste, there is this, like, kind of, law, bit of information where if it is your waste, you are responsible for it until its end of life. It's called duty of care. Now, I can give my waste to someone and then they go, "Hi, here, have this eight-digit code." And then you receive that code and you go, "Thank you. What do I do with it?" Hold onto it? Can I check it? No. No, you can't check. What do you want to check? like, "Oh, who's carrying it? Who's moving it? Are they licensed? Where's it going to? What happened to it next?" No, you've got the physical documentation to take that. Oh, so you've got now two bits of information. Can I check that they're the same? No. No. So for me, that needs ironing out because it makes no sense. It's like basically you having a receipt and then the bank charges you whatever they want, and then you being like, "What do I do with that? How do I reconcile this? Oh you don't because you never saw that.” That's one problem I've got with it. 

But they've got the tech, they've got the capability because they've got other ways of extracting data out of it. It's just they don't have that bit, and I think that's key. I think that's important.

[00:28:09] Barry O'Kane: But overall, like you said, you're feeling that there's a positive and you mentioned that, like the problem is being approached with an iterative mindset. So the assumption being that we're seeing a good step forward and there's more and more. 

But it's also a massive change and I'm sure, in fact, I've seen, there's a whole other conversation I'm sure to be had about managing people's transition.

[00:28:27] Tom Passmore: Yeah. So I'm a critical friend of Defra's, as in I'm close with a couple of the people who are on the project, and I basically have little sidebars with them and say, "You're failing here. I like this. This needs tightening up. This is a massive problem." And then I'll either choose, pick my battles on social media.

But I'll say to everybody, without a shadow of the doubt, the technology is the easy bit. It's basically the who, what, where, when, and how of waste. It's like it arrived on this date, it came from there, and this is what it was, and it's an API. I mean, none of that is bleeding edge technology.

The biggest problem is getting human beings to go, " I've received this waste at this date and I've put it into a computer." That is the biggest problem we have as an industry. As I think most industries, like, this is why you'll get photographs of "This is my parcel." "This is your parcel. Let's have a door." “It's not my door.” So it's not unique to the waste industry. 

[00:29:21] Barry O'Kane: Totally. And that is the “technology isn't magic”, as I keep saying, that's the thing that the tools need to work with the people and like a big sectoral change like that is a big change management and training and behavioral exercise with many challenges. 

But I find it interesting that you're broadly positive on that. And I'd love to explore that more and maybe after it's settled down and we're a year or two in, we can come and reflect on that more. And from my point of view on whether that has had a significant impact on moving more circular, as in further up sort of waste chain, whether it will improve data, will allow changes up the stream to happen.

[00:29:54] Tom Passmore: Yeah, I think because they're going at it in phases, so phase one is all around this like physical site, what was received at site. It's agile, so we'll improve that as we go. They're moving into phase two now, and phase two is more about the people who move waste to that site. So if we randomly go back to the analogy about the parcel being delivered. So before it was just letting you know that a parcel had arrived at your doorstep, And that's phase one. And they go, "Cool, it's arrived. There you go." 

Phase two is this parcel has left the sender. It's on the back of a vehicle. It's now arrived at your site. Now the problem with phase two, and again, they're kind of in late discovery, early alpha or maybe mid alpha with a bit of discovery, which, you know, their issue, not mine is that currently it looks like they care about the vehicle, not the parcel.

So they're like, "Oh your parcel was picked up." "Cool." "It's on this vehicle." "Brilliant." "And it's been delivered." "What?" " One of the parcels has been delivered." " Was my parcel delivered? "We don't know." So basically, they're not tracking every bit of waste. They're not saying this container, this IBC or this drum or this pallet or whatever. They're not going, this has an ID, this has an ID, this has an ID. They're just saying that truck, that bin lorry, that whatever has an ID, figure out where your waste went after that. So that's one of these critical friend moments that I'm having with DEFRA.

[00:31:20] Barry O'Kane: And yeah I'm enjoying seeing the social media posts about that. 

Just looking at time, so the final thing I'd love to try and touch on now is coming back to Dsposal and the work you're doing. Like, what's the future? What are you excited about next? 

And does it tie to digital weight tracking, or is there another thing you're looking at, “Okay, this is the future of us”?

[00:31:36] Tom Passmore: So the future of us is - good question. So I'm at pains to say it. So one of them is about digital waste tracking, we've got digital waste tracking already. We're trying to make it easier for people.

It's all part of our waste management tech that's there. But what we want to do is actually really provide people with the information they need to get their waste tracked, basically. So I care about waste landing on sites and stuff like that, but actually I think there's a big important step before that about who can take this waste.

If they do take this waste, what happens next? So we're building up all of this data. So again, like about a decade's worth of data for both municipal waste, industrial waste, construction waste, things like that, and then giving people using MetaBase the ability to really investigate that as well.

But what comes with that is a decade's worth of changes in policy, changes in understanding, changes in, kind of, the documentation that's out there. So there's a lot of noise you have to battle through. 

And one of the things I actually really interested in looking at is how can, like, artificial intelligence help? Is artificial intelligence the route? Because I don't think we have enough data as an industry to really use AI, because the data quality isn't there. But if we can start a little bit, is there a way of being able to find all the initiatives that are available? 

So not just about getting a skippy to come in and take, but like where can I take my coffee pods? Where can I take my unused paint? Where can I take my inhalers? Where can I take all of these take-back schemes that exist for either waste or end-of-life products? Like how do we get those into a place which then can go into some form of technology that lets people know, A, this is where you should take that, and B, this is the best place you should take that. And not about marketing, because again, AI loves marketing because that's the most things it interacts with online. I don't care about marketing. I care about if I send my waste there, what will happen to it, and why do I know that's the case? And that you have to do with historical data. 

But I don't know if it's a pipe dream, Barry.

[00:33:48] Barry O'Kane: I'm very excited about it, and there's no such thing as a pipe dream. It's definitely, you know, you write that down as a goal in a business plan.

[00:33:53] Tom Passmore: Yeah, yeah. No, as in it feels plausible.

[00:33:56] Barry O'Kane: Yeah, it's totally plausible, And again thank you so much for spending the time to share so much of that with us and with me today. 

And that is an example of why I really enjoy seeing what Dsposal does and these conversations that aren't often enough. We should have them more.

[00:34:09] Tom Passmore: Yeah, indeed, yeah.

[00:34:10] Barry O'Kane: It's because of that passion and that vision and that, Okay, there is an exciting opportunity to do positive change, and I think we need more of that. This podcast is all about talking to people like you who are actually doing it, suffering through the pain, and actually having that change. So thank you so much. 

Just finally, for anybody listening who wants to reach out, find out more about Dsposal, where should they go?

[00:34:28] Tom Passmore: They should go to Dsposal.uk, which is our website. There's no “I” in Dsposal and no “co” in the domain, so it's really difficult. It's 10 years worth of hurt. So Dsposal.uk, no “I” in Dsposal. Find me on LinkedIn. I'm Tom Passmore, Dsposal again. You can probably put an “I” in that and it'll come up as me.

And that's it. That's the only social media I do because dumpster fires. Don't worry about dumpster fires out there.

[00:34:53] Barry O'Kane: Dumpster fires as well. Yeah, totally. I'm with you on that. 

So that's Dsposal, dsposal.uk. And as usual, we'll put those links and all, and a full transcript and everything we've talked about in the Show notes and on happyporchradio.com.

Thanks again Tom, that was great, for joining us.

[00:35:07] Tom Passmore: Ah, cheers, Barry. No, it was wonderful. Thank you very much.

[00:35:12] Barry O'Kane: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.

If you want to catch every episode this season, join the email list at happyporchradio.com. And also, we're celebrating season 10 in person later this year, so watch this space for more news. 

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.