As the turn of the year approaches, reporting in the YLVA system is once again a topical issue for every circular economy operator under an environmental permit. Finnish legislation requires that annual waste data on operations must be reported to the environmental permit supervisor through the YLVA reporting system in accordance with the environmental permit regulations. In practice, the system stores information on the operator, the emissions caused by the operation, and the control measures applied to the operation.
The mandatory reporting in the beginning of the year often creates an additional burden on operators subject to environmental permits. What makes the reporting particularly challenging is the fragmentation of information and the amount of manual work involved in compiling the reports. However, the burden can be lightened and sped up with a sensible system.
Real-time, accurate and automated management reduces the reporting burden
Operators working under an environmental permit must report e.g. waste streams received, treated, recovered and stored at the facility, and generated by the facility and forwarded for further treatment. In the report, the information must be entered into different forms according to activity, which means a huge amount of work, especially for facilities with a wide range of waste treatment.
Careful material flow management and accounting is a prerequisite for smooth reporting. With current tools (such as Excel), this takes a considerable amount of time and requires extreme care, so that all information is reported with the accuracy required by YLVA. The information is often scattered across different files and systems, and the accuracy of the data cannot be fully assured due to poor traceability, which means that a lot of investigation work is needed to process the reports. Without a system designed for material flow management, for example, the information from weighing systems must be collected, calculated and categorized for the report manually.
Flow by Pinja is an agile system for managing material flows and reporting
Flow by Pinja makes material traffic visible from transportation and weighing to reporting. Real-time data facilitates the traceability of material flows also for the compilation of the YLVA report, and ensures the accuracy of the data. Flow helps compile the necessary information on incoming, outgoing and stored material flows throughout the year. In addition, the system automatically records the performed operations and manages the inventory at the facility, thus producing the material effortlessly and accurately for reporting to the YLVA system.
Flow integrates seamlessly with other tools in use, such as weighing and billing systems. Flow replaces tools that require manual maintenance and cumbersome data compilation for reporting. The benefits of the system are especially visible when several different materials are stored at the facility, or they are sorted and further processed. If operations are carried out in several different locations, the benefits of the system are multiplied. The entire life cycle of waste and recycled materials treated with Flow is easy to trace and verify for the environmental permit supervisor.
Have you become interested?
Are you tired of spreadsheets or would you like to simplify your activities in the yard or office, or during reporting? Also check out the Flow by Pinja solution developed in collaboration with industry companies, which makes material flows visible and manageable, and minimizes everyday working hour hogs easily and cost-effectively.
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