Case Study: A Bespoke Waste Oil Collection App

This waste oil collection app was commissioned by a UK used cooking oil collector running more than 4,400 commercial accounts: restaurants, takeaways, pubs and food factories. The brief was to replace spreadsheets and paper job sheets with one bespoke system that could handle customer management, route planning, driver dispatch, compliance records and Defra reporting together.

Used cooking oil collection has particular demands: large customer volumes, repeat collection cycles, and a need for accurate proof of collection and mass balance data for ISCC sustainability reporting, on top of standard waste transfer note and Defra requirements.

Routes are built from customer lists, overdue filters or a radius search around a given postcode, then optimised from the depot using OpenRouteService. The builder accounts for each customer's opening hours when generating arrival windows, flags arrival conflicts, and warns when a van is approaching its capacity before the route is sent out.

A weekly and monthly dispatch calendar lets the office drag and drop routes onto drivers, with each job moving through Draft, Assigned, In Progress and Verified statuses. Customers get automatic reminders a week and a day before their collection window.

Driver shifts, breaks and overtime are tracked alongside weekly volume bonuses, with role-based logins so office and driver permissions stay separate.

Once a collection is verified, a digital waste transfer note is generated and emailed automatically to the customer, removing the paper carbon-copy process entirely. Every note carries the waste description, quantity and EWC code, built from the collection data captured on the driver app.

Verified collections automatically draft a movement record for Defra's Receipt of Waste API under EWC 20 01 25 (edible oil and fat). A deadline tracker, built around UK bank holidays, keeps office staff aware of the 2 working day reporting window so nothing is submitted late.

This app connects to Defra's Receipt of Waste API; it is not a Defra or GOV.UK service itself, and the client remains responsible for their own compliance.

The client moved from spreadsheets and paper WTNs to a single bespoke system covering CRM, routing, dispatch, driver capture and compliance. Measurable results such as admin hours saved, routes completed per day and missed collections avoided will be added here once confirmed with the client.