Your trash is RecycleSmart's treasure
Since 2019, RecycleSmart has been collecting all the waste that councils can't recycle, and is now on the cusp of national expansion. Co-founder Giorgio Baracchi explains the difficulty of educating consumers, and why he eschewed a VC raising for equity crowdfunding.
RecycleSmart co-founders Marco Prayer and Giorgio Baracchi began collecting hard to recycle items from consumers in 2019 after signing a handful of agreements with local councils in Sydney and coastal New South Wales.
They have since expanded to most capital cities and now offer a b2b and direct to consumer service, and thanks to a recent $1.4 million fundraise they are poised to expand nationally.
In this interview, Baracchi explains the company's growth to date, and the challenges of educating consumers and finding the right kind of investors. He also explains how the collapse of the RED cycle soft plastics collection scheme and changes in government policy with the rolling waste export bans have actually been good for business.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Who did you start collecting waste from, in the first place?
We started as a service that councils provide to their own residents, where they subsidise the collection of one or two shopping bags of recycling per month or whatever they want to provide to residents.
