The problem
UK waste regulations are about to change. DEFRA’s mandatory digital waste tracking comes into force in 2026/27, replacing the paper waste transfer note. That document has followed every load of skip-hire, scrap, and construction waste in the UK for decades.
For thousands of small waste operators, including single-truck owner-operators, family-run skip-hire companies, and regional fleets of two to twenty vehicles, this is an existential bureaucratic shift. Most still rely on triplicate paper books, faxed copies, and a battered file cabinet at the depot.
The market needed an app that worked the way the job actually works: outside, in the rain, in basements with no signal, with gloves on, with one hand free.
What we built
A four-step signature chain that follows a load from producer (the building site, the office, the factory) to carrier (the driver) to receiver (the transfer station), and then back into a searchable, DEFRA-ready archive.
- Offline-first capture. A driver can take a load, sign it, and hand off to the next party with no signal at all. The chain reconciles when any party comes back online.
- EWC code auto-detection. The waste classification picker (historically the part of the paperwork nobody enjoys) uses fuzzy lookup over the European Waste Catalogue with sensible defaults for the most common loads.
- Auto-split for hazardous waste. When a load contains hazardous material, the app generates both a WTN and an HWCN automatically, with the right signatures on the right document.
- Quarterly EA returns. One button generates the data carriers used to spend a Friday afternoon assembling.
- 2 and 3-year retention. Stored on UK-hosted, encrypted infrastructure. Producers and consignees get DEFRA-ready PDF exports for every party.
How we work on it
Helsh-js owns the product end-to-end: the iOS app, the web dashboard for fleet managers, the data model, the infrastructure, and the support inbox. We ship weekly. We sit on calls with actual drivers (apologetic at first, less apologetic now). We listen carefully when someone says, “I’ve tried doing this in the cab, and it doesn’t work like that.”
The result is software that does not condescend to the people who use it.
Outcomes so far
- In private beta with multiple UK carriers across skip-hire, scrap, and aggregate.
- Featured paperwork-reduction case studies in our beta cohort.
- Zero offline-write conflicts in the field across thousands of test loads, a number we are quietly proud of.