A person, not a brand.
Hi, I'm Markus Wohlfahrt, and I built LessWaste. It's run by one person from Freiburg, Germany. It isn't owned by a company, a brand, or a lobby, and nobody is paying me to tell you any of this.
I'll be upfront about something: I'm not a scientist or a lifelong environmental campaigner. I'm a designer. I've spent more than twenty years in branding and advertising, helping companies from startup to household names, communicate clearly and have recognisable look-and-feel.
That's exactly why LessWaste exists.
Two decades of that work taught me how astonishingly good products are at hiding things behind beautiful design. A bottle can feel light, clean and “eco” and still be almost entirely virgin plastic. The footprint is real, it's just made invisible. And making invisible things visible happens to be the one thing a designer is actually trained to do. So I pointed those skills at something I believe in instead of at another sales pitch.
LessWaste is the result: a plain, honest number for the plastic in everyday products, and a lower-waste alternative wherever one exists. No shaming, no vague good vibes, just the figure, and where it came from.
Where the numbers come from
I'm one person and I built this lean, with modern tools rather than a big team or budget. I tried to make it as energy efficient as possible. But the data underneath isn't guesswork. Every figure traces back to published, peer-reviewed research and named institutions; life-cycle studies from university researchers, and data from bodies like the OECD, UNEP, the US EPA and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
You can check every source and see exactly how each number is worked out on the Methodology and Sources pages. And if I've got something wrong, I would genuinely rather know. So please do tell me.
That's the whole thing. One designer, a lot of published science, and a belief that people make better choices when the hidden cost is finally in plain sight.
How it's funded
The short version: nobody pays to be here, and nothing on this site is for sale.
LessWaste is independent and self-funded. No brand, retailer or manufacturer pays to be listed, to be scored well, or to appear as a recommended alternative. There's no advertising and no sponsored content anywhere on the site. If a product scores badly, it's because of its footprint — not because a competitor paid for it to.
That independence is the entire point. A tool like this is only worth something if you can trust that the number in front of you wasn't bought. So here are a few promises I'll keep no matter what:
The rankings, ratings and recommendations will never be for sale — not to anyone, at any price.
If outside funding ever supports the project in any way, it will be said plainly, right here on this page, and it will never touch a single figure or ranking.
Things like reader support, research grants, or licensing the underlying dataset to organisations that want to build on it. None of those change what you see.
If the way LessWaste is funded ever shifts, this page shifts with it. You'll always be able to come here and see exactly who is behind it and how it keeps the lights on.
LessWaste — created & designed by DESART – Markus Wohlfahrt