As of today it's official: Wachswandel 2.0 is live. What started as an internal necessity has grown into a comprehensive digital upgrade – a completely redesigned website, a partner portal for our collection points, a new reporting system, and an operational dashboard that digitally maps every process from pickup to production.
Why This Update?
Wachswandel is growing. With every new partner, every new collection point, and every additional tour, coordination becomes more complex. Until now, we managed much of it manually – by phone, WhatsApp, and spreadsheets. That was feasible with 20 collection points; at 50+ it becomes a bottleneck. For a nationwide expansion, it's nearly impossible to do it any other way. We needed digital tools that grow with us.
Smart Tour Management
The heart of Wachswandel 2.0 is intelligent tour management. Instead of coordinating pickups individually, the system plans tours so that as many collection points as possible are on one route. This saves driving time, reduces CO₂ emissions, and makes logistics significantly more efficient. Drivers see their optimized route directly on their smartphone – including all relevant information about each stop.
Automated Collection Point Management
Partners at collection points can use the new partner portal to report fill levels, request pickups, and view the status of their bins. The system automatically detects when a bin is getting full and suggests the collection point for the next tour. This way, no pickup is forgotten and no bin overflows.
A Digitally Connected Pickup System
From the moment a report is filed to the weighing at the workshop, everything is now digitally connected. When a partner reports a pickup, it automatically appears in the dashboard. The dispatcher assigns it to a tour. The driver documents the pickup on-site – weight, quality, photos. All data flows back in real time and is compiled into meaningful analytics.
Built Entirely In-House
The entire digital transformation was conceived, developed, and implemented by Philipp Ackermann – supported by the whole team: John Pierre Ackermann, Janina Schäfer, and Maren Klein contributed feedback, testing, and ideas to ensure the system wasn't designed on paper but refined against reality.
No expensive agency, no off-the-shelf tool that only half fits. Instead, a tailor-made solution designed precisely for Wachswandel's processes. As a young social enterprise, this is also a matter of resources – every euro that doesn't go into software licenses goes directly into the mission.
What's Next?
Wachswandel 2.0 is not an endpoint but a foundation. In the coming weeks, we'll feed the system with real data, gather feedback from our partners, and continue to optimize. Our goal: to make every pickup so efficient and seamless that we can focus entirely on what truly matters – rescuing as much candle wax from the bin as possible.
