I'd like to start a company that takes care of your trash

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3382044

by thetrashguy • 15 years ago

1 4 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Every time I take out the garbage my heart hurts. It's painful for me to realize that I'm tossing out a plastic bag full of stuff that can potentially be valuable, not to mention harmful for people and the environment if it ends up in the wrong place.

I live in a very small apartment in a dense urban area. I don't have much room to sort or recycle trash in my apartment, and even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with it after its been sorted. In my building, it all ends up in one pile in the trash room.

Yesterday I had a thought that I would actually be willing pay someone to pick up my trash daily, from my apartment, but only if I knew that that person/company would recycle it and make best use out of it.

I'm not passionate about trash, but I am passionate about my footprint. And I'm passionate about making the best use of things.

I would like to start a company that charges you to take care of your trash. You'll get a special bin for your home with three compartments, one for your everyday trash, one for your food waste and one for your sanitary waste. The bin wouldn't take much more space that your regular trash bin and it would come with biodegradable bags and a daily pick-up service. Perhaps there is a way to conveniently place the trash in some sort of a container right outide your door or something.

The problem is that the regular trash service is exremely wasteful and inefficient (where I live). And I believe there are more people out there like me who would like to decrease their footprint on the environment but for some reason aren't able to without changing their lifestyle (long work hours and living in a dense urban area for example).

There's so much you could do with what we consider to be "trash". We live in a waste society and it's completely unsustainable. I hope a venture like this would be sustainable environmentally as well as financially and socially.

I'm going to do some market research on this in my area. Could something like this take off? Any thoughts, advice, feedback?

Thanks, and happy holidays

michael_dorfman• 15 years ago

Well, in many regions, trash collection is a municipal monopoly, so your customers are going to be city councils, not people.

Also, in many places, "curbside sorting" of the type you describe already takes place. Here in Norway, I get three trash bins from the city-- one for regular trash, one for paper, and one for food trash. About 25 years ago I lived in Montpelier, Vermont and there we had two streams-- one for recyclables like paper, plastic, and metal cans, and one for everything else. Both of these are based on weekly pickups-- daily pickups would be prohibitively expensive, it seems to me, and would also enlarge the environmental footprint (in terms of fuel required.)

samlev• 15 years ago

Daily pickup could also lead to people throwing out more stuff because they don't have to ration their bin space.

Where I'm living in the UK, there's four bins: Plastics, glass, cans (collected once a month); Paper, cardboard, etc. (collected once a month); Green and food waste (collected once a week); General trash (collected once a fortnight)

In Germany and a number of other places, they go to the effort of getting people to separate green, brown, and 'white' glass, also.

aw9994• 15 years ago

I like the idea, not so sure about the business viability on an individual household basis.

Even though urban areas are dense, your customer base can still be very spread out over many different buildings or neighborhoods. I think your best bet would be to try and market the idea toward landlords and building owners/managers. That's your issue in your home now I believe, if your building had big recycling bins in the trash room you could use it would be easy to recycle.

Right now it looks like your option is to stockpile your recyclables and make trips to your closest recycling center which is inconvenient.

That being said, I've lived in a small apartment before and it was fairly easy to recycle with 3 guys generating trash, even though the recycling "dumpster" was a long hike away. Break down the cardboard (cereal boxes!) and slide it between your fridge and the wall or stack it in an unflattened box,this saves an amazing amount of room in the bags, we went down to 1 bag a week or less for 3 people after doing this. hang some double-layered plastic shopping bags on your cabinet handles or something. We took the bottles and stuff out every week or two, rinse containers with water that will smell. (Soup cans, etc)

picnicman73• 15 years ago

I lived in Bali for 2 years and this was all there was. Either you burned your trash or you were a westerner that had money to pay for someone to collect it. They gave you bins and taught you how to separate it. You get very conscious of what you can and can't throw away when it doesn't just magically disappear. But I think it'll be hard to convert people who are not used to thinking of their trash as a cost they are burdened with. Most Americans are used to thinking of it as right. In italy we have to pay a tax trash and it's usually a contract given to a private company In the town I live they provide special bags and you put out certain materials on fixed days. In other words, it's done in many places, but whether it's profitable is another story. I think you have to find a way to really convince people how right it is and find someone to supply the "trash" to who ideally pays you something for the raw material.

I'd like to start a company that takes care of your trash

Related Stories