Data Visualisations using Waste Data Interrogator

Across the industry there is growing interest in how waste actually moves across the country. Operators, local authorities and large waste producers all talk about the need for transparency, better evidence and clearer supply‑chain visibility. Yet much of the underlying data sits in difficult formats or is not easily interpreted without specialist knowledge.

We wanted to show what is possible when waste expertise is combined with proper data handling. This piece is an example. It uses public data sets, a clear methodology and a visual approach to tell a story about how waste travels from the North West to disposal sites across England.

You can explore the interactive Kepler map below. It is fully usable in the browser. We encourage you to play with the layers and filters and to get in touch if you want to understand what else we can reveal with similar techniques.

Why We Chose This Data

Every year the Environment Agency publishes the Waste Data Interrogator. It is a rich but complex data set that describes movements of waste between origins and treatment or disposal sites. It covers hundreds of thousands of individual entries. It is not easy to work with in Excel if you want to derive any meaningful patterns.

We extracted data from 2019 to 2024 and focused on movements where the origin point is within the North West. This gave a consistent geographic frame and allowed us to highlight both regional behaviours and national dependencies.

Turning Difficult Data into Something Useful

To create a map like this you need to bring together several pieces of information that are not provided in a single place.

Origins

The Waste Data Interrogator records origins as local authority districts or as larger regions. That means there is no direct latitude and longitude. We sourced the centroid coordinates for each area from the Office National Statistics Open Geography Portal. This allowed us to place every origin consistently on the map.

Destinations

The data contains permit references for treatment and disposal sites. To convert those into actual locations we used the Environment Agency public register, matched the sites and recorded their coordinates.

Structuring the movements

Once we had origins and destinations geocoded, we restructured the data so it could be uploaded to Kepler. This included cleaning, filtering and reformatting several years of entries into a single coherent model.

Building the map

Kepler.gl is very good at rendering complex spatial relationships. We used it to create the arc map shown here. It displays the origin of each movement in the North West and the path to its corresponding disposal site anywhere in England. The colour weighting in the arcs helps highlight the intensity of movement along certain corridors.

The result is the visual you see here. It works best on a desktop and there are some instructions below on how you can play with it.

What the Map Shows

The visual highlights a simple but important point. Waste generated in the North West flows across the country into a wide range of facilities. Some flows are predictable and local. Others move surprisingly far. This picture helps illustrate the interconnected nature of the industry and how dependent we all are on infrastructure across multiple regions.

It also makes visible what can’t easily be seen when looking at static spreadsheets. Which facilities are key nodes. Where capacity is most strained. How different waste types behave. How movements change over time. These are exactly the kinds of insights that richer data work can support and helps to uncover the questions we should be asking.

Why We Think This Matters

At Dsposal we believe that compliance, assurance and operational performance all improve when organisations understand the data that underpins them. This map is a practical demonstration of that belief. Digital waste tracking is heralding a new era with the digitalisation of waste movements offering an opportunity for businesses to gain greater insights, but it also puts organisations who don’t understand their data at greater risk. The map shows what becomes possible when you combine waste industry knowledge with the ability to structure large data sets and use the right data visualisation tools.

It is not a polished research project. It is simply an example of the type of analysis many organisations say they would benefit from but do not have the time or technical skills to deliver in house. It’s also a little ode to open – this was possible because of a number of open waste datasets and open source tooling.

Explore the Map and Talk to Us

The map is interactive so you can zoom in, filter and explore the flows in your own way. To zoom you can scroll with your mouse wheel, pan by left clicking and dragging, and then tilt using right click and dragging. More information can be found on the kepler.gl help guides.

We encourage anyone working in waste, compliance or environmental performance to spend a few minutes with it and think about what similar analysis could show for your organisation, region or waste type. Or what your data would reveal to you with the right treatment.

If the map sparks ideas about what your own data could show, we would welcome a conversation. The work behind this view is the same work that helps organisations understand their waste movements, refine their assurance processes and spot risks earlier. Share a question or a challenge and we can explore what a similar approach might uncover for you.