The Uber-style app from Rubicon Global will “enable on-demand collection of household waste” for recycling.
Circulate News reported on Rubicon Global’s app for the “residential waste market”, allowing for “on-demand collection” of household waste. The app is modelled on the private car hire app Uber, in that “waste collections are scheduled and paid for via mobile with the requests going out to a network of local haulers”.
The company works with big enterprises in the USA to “better manage waste and recycling loads”, and reducing costs “associated with waste” as well as “increasing the effective cycling of different flows of materials”. It uses an online platform to connect local haulage companies with businesses that “have large waste streams”, and assesses flows before “selling as much as they can to a network of recycling partners”.
In essence, the business model is “based on the amount of money that Rubicon can save clients” as well as “the amount it can make by selling recyclable materials”, thereby “inherently discourag[ing]” waste going to landfill or for incineration. The app came after the company “decided to transition that model to the residential sector”, and relies on the “ecosystem” of consumers and the haulers, who are “the equivalent” of Uber’s drivers.
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Rubicon also noted that the model “creates a more complex system, where technology aims to connect those with waste to those who can gain value from it, and the logistics network needed to make it work”, with the “core of its design” being the idea that “there is economic advantage for all of the members in the ‘ecosystem’”.