‘A full circular solution’: RecycleSmart sees everyday waste as a valuable resource

There's very little that most consumers discard every day that Sydney-based RecycleSmart doesn't consider suitable for repurposing – from wastepaper to furniture and even contact lenses.

The mission to divert these items from landfill is what drives company founders Giorgio Baracchi and Marco Prayer who are currently seeking up to $2.5 million in a Birchal crowdfunding campaign to boost their growing national footprint.

Since 2010, Baracchi has launched several ventures aimed at getting more consumers to do the right thing with their waste. In this special report, the latest in a series on the circular economy by Business News Australia, Baracchi reveals that he is as passionate as ever about the cause.

“Segregation is the most important thing in the waste industry,” says Baracchi, who launched RecycleSmart with Prayer in 2019 as an on-demand pick-up service for "no-bin" waste.

“It’s about dividing items to prevent contamination. If you have cardboard and a bottle of ketchup together in a bin, for example, that is going to landfill because no one is cleaning the ketchup off the cardboard. That’s why 70 per cent of the content of a yellow bin goes to landfill.”

While Baracchi’s earlier ventures were largely aimed at changing consumer behaviour to reduce waste, RecycleSmart takes a more direct approach to the problem that the co-founder has been trying to solve for decades.

Since inception, RecycleSmart estimates it has collected about 1.2 million tonnes of items from consumers and businesses, diverting them from landfill.

The business, which Baracchi likens to a last-mile logistics company, operates an Uber-like platform that currently supports more than 60 independent drivers nationally who collect discarded items from households and business for a fee and transport them to more than 270 partners, including recyclers, who process the items collected.

“We optimise to find the best solution and we change our partners all the time,” says Baracchi.

There is almost no end to items that RecycleSmart will consider including takeaway coffee cups, glasses, contact lenses, homeware and furniture.

“If you have a bag full of plastics, we will come and pick it up from your house. That’s where the social conscience plays – with the smaller everyday items.

“We even collect large stuff now. If you want to get rid of a couch there are other solutions out there, but not many are seamless or easy.

“That’s what we have built a very convenient way to get rid of anything you don’t want in the most convenient and sustainable way.”

The solution always comes back to segregation.

“We have two layers of segregation with our business, because the problems occur when the items are mixed,” says Baracchi.

“Our drivers will divide all the items the moment they pick up your bag. That’s the first layer of segregation, and then they will drive at the end of the day to our warehouse where they will divide the items even more – from tables to batteries and e-waste.

“So, we have the white polystyrene guy and the black polystyrene guy, and the coffee cup guy among others that we send these items to. When you have one item and one thing we can do something with that item. The problems occur when they are mixed.”

Baracchi describes the business as a “full circular solution”.

"We are very flexible in what we do with the items we collect but in reality we are giving end users items that they are looking for," he says.

“There is a big demand in the market for raw materials. Polystyrene recyclers need polystyrene, for example. We are not giving them products but materials that they can process.

“For now, we are happy not to have to pay to get rid of what we collect and that’s a massive difference to everyone else in the industry.

“All the items we have collected have been either reused – like wearable clothes that were diverted to charity – recycled or repurposed somehow. They didn’t go into a hole in the ground which is huge.”

RecycleSmart estimates that it has serviced more than 37,000 households since inception, adding that the business has gained traction over the past year.

The offer document issued for the crowdfunding campaign reports that RecycleSmart posted a record revenue month in May, up 15 per cent from the previous month to deliver annualised revenue of $3.4 million.

The capital raise has already exceeded its $250,000 minimum and currently sits at more than $870,000. It will add to the $4 million previously raised by the company, which counts Antler as an investor.

RecycleSmart will apply the funds to scale its reach to Australian households through a marketing and sales campaign and to improve its technology capabilities to turn its waste data into “meaningful action”.

“We have a lot of data on waste and we believe that using this data can really help local councils, government and even manufacturers to design products better,” says Baracchi.

RecycleSmart also wants major corporations to get on board and currently the company has a partnership with Qantas where customers can link their RecycleSmart account with their Qantas Frequent Flyer accounts.

The founders say corporate partnerships are critical to embedding “circular economy thinking into everyday life”.

“No one else is doing anything like this in Australia at this scale,” says Baracchi.

“We now have an operation in every state in every capital city and to create revenue streams with government, business and consumers we now need more people using our service.

"We're proud of the community we've built so far and it's clear the demand is only growing.”