Energy management software: tools for efficient ISO 50001 energy management
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- Dieser Artikel wurde am 31. March 2026 aktualisiert.
T
raditional waste management was for a long time a niche discipline – often positioned somewhere between production and administration. But that has changed significantly since the EU Circular Economy Package, ESG strategies and “Zero Waste”. Many companies are therefore currently looking for digital solutions to optimize the various processes for waste prevention, recycling & Co.
In this comprehensive guide to selecting waste management software, we summarize all relevant information for the process of choosing the right tool and identify the most relevant providers for you as part of an individual software matching.
Which waste management software is right for you?
If you are already very familiar with the waste and circular economy sector and want to start our free matching service for a waste management tool based on your criteria right away, here’s a shortcut.
Waste management software 2026
Waste Management Tools 2026
Efficient waste management: Why is using software important?
In many companies, the digitization of waste management has not yet taken place and is usually still organized in Excel lists or paper folders. This may work as long as there are no special requirements. When waste volumes increase, documentation (e.g., for eANV) is missing, disposal costs unexpectedly explode, or goals such as waste prevention and recycling simply become more important, it becomes clear: Without structured processes and reliable data, waste management becomes expensive and unsustainable.
Waste management software solves exactly these problems. It records waste centrally, documents quantities, disposal providers, costs, recycling rates, automatically generates evidence documentation, and ensures clear responsibilities. This not only saves you time in day-to-day operations, but also gives you a complete overview at any time – including for audits, environmental reports, or internal analyses.
It gets especially interesting when you don’t just dispose of waste, but actively reduce residual waste. The software shows you where waste is generated, which materials are expensive to dispose of, and where better separation is possible.
In short: Thanks to the transparency created by waste management software, you save time, reduce costs, meet various legal obligations and lay the foundation for sustainable, transparent waste management, in which waste reduction also improves the KPIs in your carbon footprint.
Waste management is a sub-area of the integrated management concept HSEQ – also EHS – (health, safety, environment and quality management) and, in this context, particularly of environmental management.
To give you some guidance during the software selection process, we take a look at the current market in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Market overview: waste management tool providers in the DACH region
As many companies have adopted a new strategic focus on sustainability, the market for waste management software has evolved significantly in a short period of time. For a long time, the technical solutions were offered exclusively by large waste disposal companies, which provided their customers with proprietary portals or tools—often, however, with the sales-driven intention of tying customers to their own services.
In the German-speaking region, there are now around 30 software providers offering solutions for different industries and company sizes—from lean tools for smaller businesses to comprehensive platforms for corporations with multiple international sites and a correspondingly high volume of waste.
Today, data-driven, agile start-ups are bringing fresh momentum to the industry and offering modern solutions that are excellent to use. Without major implementation effort, processes are optimized agilely and results are delivered immediately (more on ROI later).
To make matching for a software solution on our platform easier, we divided the providers into these three categories:
Specialized waste management software: These tool providers focus exclusively on processes related to waste and recyclable materials—from generation and separation to disposal and cost and volume analyses. The solutions can be used flexibly with various waste disposal companies, offer extensive evaluations, and support companies in actively managing and optimizing waste processes. Even here, the market is splitting, with solutions emerging for increasingly important sub-areas such as recycling and packaging management (among other things due to the regulation of packaging waste within the PPWR framework).
ERP and environmental management software: Some ERP systems and comprehensive types of environmental management software (also EHS/HSE suites) offer waste management modules. These are often well integrated into existing processes, but in the overall context can be complex and less specialized. The focus is usually on pure documentation—optimization and analysis processes are provided with basic functions.
Disposal-company-tied solutions: Large waste disposal companies continue to offer their own platforms through which you report volumes, trigger orders, and retrieve documentation. The advantage: the interface to the disposal company is integrated directly. The disadvantage: you are usually tied to this one service provider—true comparison of different disposal companies or free choice in tenders is made more difficult.
In addition, there are niche providers that focus on specific types of waste (e.g., hazardous goods or production waste) or address specific industries (e.g., the construction industry, which has the largest waste volumes, as well as food or hospitals).
The decision about which type of software provider supports you best in waste management and unlocks the greatest optimization potential must be analyzed in the software selection process —and yes, it’s also a budget issue. In any case, you should screen the specialized tools to understand the full range of possibilities. You can obtain suitable recommendations for this screening based on your criteria via our matching below.
Features: How does software help you with waste management?
Thanks to the wide range of providers, it doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting to digitize the various processes or replacing software already in use with a more effective alternative: in 2025, there is a solution for every need and budget that delivers significant added value.
Let’s take a look at the most useful software features:
Waste recording and volume management: No more Excel chaos: the software centrally records all waste types, quantities, and points of origin—whether residual waste, recyclables, or hazardous waste. It also documents changes or corrections seamlessly.
Practical example: You can see at a glance how much plastic waste is generated in production or how paper consumption is developing in the offices—sometimes even in real time and without manual data collection.
Evidence and document management: Waste documentation, consignment notes, disposal contracts or Efb certificates – all relevant documents are automatically digitized and stored in the system, neatly filed by waste type, location and disposal company.
Practical example: During an environmental audit, you open the software, filter by “hazardous waste” and within seconds have all the relevant documentation at hand, including disposal company data.
Optimization of waste disposal & logistics: Smart control of disposal processes avoids unnecessary trips, prevents empty containers from being collected, and ensures containers are filled optimally. The software plans disposal routes efficiently and reduces transport costs.
Practical example: A logistics company uses sensors in waste containers that record fill levels in real time. The software automatically calculates the optimal pickup time and notifies the waste disposal provider. This avoids unnecessary empty trips and reduces costs.
ESG and sustainability reporting: Waste management becomes part of your ESG strategy: the software provides the KPIs for your sustainability report – from recycling rates to CO2 balances.
Practical example: For your ESG reporting, you can create an overview of all waste volumes and recovery routes for the entire year with one click – including a comparison to the previous year. More details on the relevance with regard to the CSRD and the VSME will follow in the next section.
Waste prevention and improving the recycling rate: Waste management doesn’t just mean disposal—it also means prevention. The software shows you where waste is generated, how you can separate it better, or which materials can be reused.
Practical example: The analysis shows that large quantities of clean cardboard packaging are being disposed of directly—instead, they could be reused internally for packaging purposes.
Legal certainty and compliance: Safely on top of legal requirements: The software knows the relevant regulations, documents them in a legal register, and ensures that all evidence, deadlines, and documentation obligations are met. In this context, note that ISO 14001 is currently being revised, and the tool must respond to this, if relevant for you.
Practical example: In the event of an incident report, the responsible authority is automatically informed and all required documents are attached directly.
If you are currently still working manually with spreadsheets or outdated software, you are surely already longing for the go-live date of the new software. Also note that there are now simplifying AI integrations (e.g., for digitizing receipts) that ensure waste management gets a whole new look and generates good news within and about the company.
ESG: Waste management as a key part of the circular economy
The new awareness for optimizations in waste management results, among other things, from the new requirements for the resource and circular economy. “Zero Waste” and sustainable business practices have become a real goal for many companies, or are being brought into companies’ awareness through regulation.
The most important new EU directives for waste management that are already in force or that you will have to deal with in the future, depending on your product portfolio, are:
PPWR (EU Packaging Regulation) Single-Use Plastics Fund Act (EWKFondsG) EU Waste Framework Directive (upcoming revision) EU Battery Regulation (battery passport as well as other product areas in the digital product passport such as textiles, white goods, construction materials, etc.)
Your waste management status as well as the activities and measures to specifically improve the various footprints (CCF and PCF) also belong in the sustainability report – the waste balance sheet ends up, for example, directly in ESRS E5, the reporting standards of EFRAG.
For reports under CSRD (as well as VSME) you should know exactly how much waste is generated at each site, how you dispose of it, what portion is recycled, and whether you manage to reduce your waste volume year after year. The optimizations in your waste management are therefore not only “observed” internally, but also by external stakeholders in your annual reporting.
Through ESG, waste management is an area with many data points, analysis reports, and ongoing optimization processes. There are therefore many advantages and possible applications for using a waste-optimizing tool. Now, the investments in software still need to pay off for you.
Budget and ROI: How much does waste management software cost?
Since we (still) don’t know your individual criteria, it’s of course difficult to recommend a specific budget here. The market is simply too diverse, as described above. In general, prices span a fairly wide range—from very lean solutions for smaller businesses starting at around €100 to €500 per month to comprehensive platforms for larger SMEs or corporations that cost mid four-figure amounts per month.
Factors that influence the price include, for example: Number of waste types Number of users Number of company locations Waste volumes Applicable laws and regulations
Below you’ll find an illustrative ROI calculation for an SME—a mid-sized manufacturing company with five locations, around 500 employees, and an annual waste volume of 2,500 tons (mixed commercial waste, paper, plastics, metals, wood, hazardous waste) that decides to use specialized waste management software.
- Better waste disposal provider terms: 5 to 10% lower prices through regular tenders and direct cost comparisons (with a waste budget of €500,000 = approx. €25,000–€50,000 savings)
- Automated invoice auditing: typical error rate approx. 3%—systematic checks identify incorrect or duplicate charges (potentially €10,000–€15,000 savings)
- Efficiency gains: approx. 30% less manual effort for waste reporting, documentation, and internal coordination—saving about one to two hours per week per location (projected at approx. €10,000 in personnel costs per year)
- Avoidable fines/penalties: if no documentation is missing or deadlines are not overlooked (potential avoidance: approx. €5,000–€10,000 per year)
👉 Total savings potential: €50,000–€85,000 per year
Even with these very simple approaches, the budget spent on the software is justified. And by creating transparency, many innovations for production or new opportunities for procurement in purchasing are set in motion.
Our recommendation: Fill out our Match Assistant carefully to receive a non-binding budget estimate from selected providers on our platform.
Waste management software comparison: How to find the right provider
Screening the newly formed software market and finding the best provider according to your criteria is difficult due to the lack of transparency in the market. Our database contains the most relevant waste management tools for the German-speaking region – enriched with hard and soft factors such as functions, modules, standards, interfaces, industry expertise, prices, and much more.
You can now benefit from our unique market overview as well as the expertise gained from over 700 ESG matchings for SMEs and corporations from a wide range of industries: We support you from the initial criteria catalog through to the final provider selection and save you a lengthy and time-consuming market research process.
Through our matching, we identify in an individual shortlist (called a Matchboard by us) the three providers of software solutions that fit your situation.
The best part: This comparison of tool providers is non-binding and free of charge for you, and anonymous towards the providers.
If you want to know which solution will best support you in the future with the various tasks, take a moment now and fill out the Match Assistant!
We look forward to matching with you!
Waste management software matching – tools based on your criteria
Providers in the matching: 32
- Letztes Update am 31. March 2026
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Matchilla’s approach is brilliant: I no longer have to painstakingly research consultants and software providers or fight my way through countless comparison portals – the right providers come to me, so to speak – with just a few minutes of effort. The matching process saves us a lot of resources.
Searching for suitable service providers is easy and super-fast with Matchilla. Getting in touch, specifying requirements, and after just a few days the results were in. This way, we got information about providers we hadn’t even heard of before. A real added value.
Matchilla impressed me with its short, clear lines of communication: our specific needs are understood immediately, analyzed perfectly, and matched with the right providers in a short time. Matchilla’s platform works quickly, is straightforward, and guides you precisely through the service provider selection process.
Questions about software matching
Why should you use Matchilla to select software?
We explained in detail in this article how the software market in the waste management sector is evolving. The research into provider options and the selection process are complex and time-consuming.
We have already successfully carried out the structured matching process you go through with us for many companies (mid-sized businesses and corporations) and therefore know virtually every possible constellation when searching for EHS, ESG and compliance tool providers.
With this market overview combined with our personal expertise, you gain an immense knowledge advantage that not only saves you the cumbersome research work, but also leads you to the right provider in a structured process via the Matchilla platform.
How much does it cost to create a matchboard comparing waste management software providers?
The Matchilla service is free of charge, non-binding, and anonymized vis-à-vis the providers. The individual assessment to select the best software for you, as well as the provision of extensive background information, is financed through the providers’ platform fees. In general, we do not have any paid contractual relationship with you. The choice is, of course, yours—just as you can end the matching process at any time.
How do I start the matching?
Simply start by filling out the Match Assistant. This gives us an initial insight into your requirements. We will contact you personally if further specifications are needed. This helps us refine the selection criteria and include additional, individual decision factors beyond the standard data in the matching. Based on the aggregated information, we create the matchboard on our platform featuring the tool providers most relevant to you.Can the results from the matching be used in procurement?
The Matchilla platform can be used for an official software tender, assuming that the budget will be below your threshold. In addition to the existing information about the providers, you can also collect the relevant quotes that comply with your compliance rules directly on the matchboard. Using the invite function, you share the quotes not only with procurement, but optionally with all stakeholders involved in the process within the company.
For your individual matching request, Matchilla creates a tailored vendor competition, making prices more comparable and negotiable for you. That will make procurement, your boss, and your own budget happy!
How can I be sure that Matchilla selects the right waste management software?
Our selection process is based on an efficient interaction of data, algorithms, and a healthy portion of personal expertise. Thanks to the number of matching processes already completed, our data basis is unique. In addition, no matchboard is released without one of our experts adding their input. Even companies that have already spoken to several providers are surprised by even more suitable options that have not yet been researched.
After creating the matchboard, we also support you in the vendor discussions, adjust your requirements together if necessary based on new insights, and are available to you at any time until we have identified the right software for you together.
Think of Matchilla as a neutral sparring partner in this software selection process. We want your company to continue using the services of the Matchilla platform for many future searches for service providers. That’s why we have a strong interest in ensuring that you not only gain access to an excellent procurement process, but also ALWAYS find the best possible providers through us.
Try it/us with no obligation!
Environmental Management Expert
Ulli Theves is Head of EHS and ESG Matchings at Matchilla and an expert in software and consulting. In MatchZINE, he shares his expertise and regularly publishes news and interesting facts about the circular economy & more.
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