A Startup Just Got $30M to Shake Up the Garbage Industry

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/rubicon-global/

by JSeymourATL • 12 years ago

53 26 12 years ago

jbob2000• 12 years ago

Good luck, the garbage industry has lots of participation from organized crime and they are 100% not interested being shaken up.

justizin• 12 years ago

My initial reaction, I have to admit, was roughly yours.

I read on, hoping to find some kind of innovative notion, some x factor that would be a real game changer, annnnd I smacked right up into this:

"Founded by Morris and Lane Moore in 2008, Rubicon has created a virtual marketplace where thousands of small, local haulers can bid on portions of huge national contracts. This fosters competition between haulers, driving down the price of service."

Sure, people who use their own private vehicles to haul trash and recycling for a living are going to love taking portions of national contracts away from union workers with benefits and company vehicles, for about five minutes.

How many of these workers will live in their hauling vehicles?

scott_karana• 12 years ago

"Local haulers" implies, to me, local industry professionals who would prefer not to work for the Big Two.

I didn't interpret it as "Uber for Trash", people lugging banana peels and coffee grinds in their Civics.

HillRat• 12 years ago

No one's talking about "UberX for garbage;" the idea here is to let local companies with a relatively small number of trucks syndicate to compete against the large, national companies for contracts they otherwise wouldn't have access to. These are companies that are licensed and already under contract with either the local municipality, or individual homeowners and businesses, to pick up trash.

A company like Southland isn't going to want to negotiate waste haulage deals for each city 7/11 operates in; this concept lets -- as far as I can tell -- large companies negotiate with a single virtual supplier, who then has subcontractual responsibilities.

The interesting part is how Rubicon then attempts to extract value from the trash. Given that recycling is a loss center for local governments, if they can pull off value extraction from the solid waste stream then they're going to be an environmental and public-fiscal net good.

Someone1234• 12 years ago

I think you're overstating it a little with regards to the US in particular, but here is an article on the topic: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/200...

notjustanymike• 12 years ago

Seriously? They didn't go with "clean up the garbage industry". Missed opportunity Wired.. I'm disappointed.

comrade1• 12 years ago

Garbage collection should not be private enterprise. It is a public service. If you've ever lived in Cambridge MA you can see just how bad it is when it's run by private companies competing with each other - garbage trucks of multiple companies everywhere blocking the streets, stinking up neighborhoods with their exhaust, constant noise...

d357r0y3r• 12 years ago

Garbage collection is not a public service everywhere, especially in towns that don't collect utility taxes for it or in locations not within city limits.

icebraining• 12 years ago

That's a problem with a particular model, not with privatization in general (e.g. you could simply contract with a single company per city division, instead of having overlapping service, and if they're noisier or dirtier than public trucks, that's just incompetence of whoever drafted the contract).

prawn• 12 years ago

I agree, and I'm someone who usually favours a non-privatised approach for utilities. In my council area, the refuse collection is contracted out (to one supplier for the region) and it seems reasonably efficient. Truck goes past at the same time each week, never have a problem.

This covers bins for general waste, green waste and recycling. There is also an annual on-demand service for heavy waste (e.g., whitegoods, furniture) handled by a contractor. Council points me to the contractor, I make the request and get a date to put out my two cubic metres of junk. Works well enough.

r00fus• 12 years ago

Local governments outsource. There might be good money in being the most efficient outsourced waste management provider.

mig39• 12 years ago

I agree with you for household garbage. Should be just like any other city utility.

Not for commercial and industrial garbage, though. Which is what this is about?

onezeno• 12 years ago

Shouldn't the market sort this out in the long run? That is, I would expect to see company buyouts and mergers that would reduce the levels of overhead and redundancy.

pkaye• 12 years ago

Yes, kind of like in the cable and cellphone industry.

bluthru• 12 years ago

Yep, residential garbage collection and recycling is an essential service, and it makes sense to maximize efficiency by not having overlapping routes.

iwonagr• 12 years ago

There is another start-up that tries to tackle the topic of Garbage Management based on data. It's really cool how they are trying to set up a system for smart garbage collection. I saw them present at Slush14 Conference last November in Helsinki. http://www.enevo.com/

underwires• 12 years ago

Lots of garbage companies already do this, particularly in SF, Palo Alto, and Portland

jeddawson• 12 years ago

I’ve having a hard time figuring out how this is actually going to be any different than the existing “brokerage” services that are common in the solid waste industry. I really hope I’m wrong because this industry is ready for an operational overhaul and I would love someone from Rubicon to jump in here and point out where they are different.

Waste Management purchased one of the largest solid waste brokers in the nation (OakLeaf) in 2011 [1] and through that acquisition now brokers sold waste and recycling collection services to smaller collection companies across the nation. Large national brands like those mentioned sub out the management of collection contracts for their individual location’s waste services to Waste Management’s brokerage division. This sounds just like the business model described for Rubicon.

One of their primary claims that I’m having a hard time with is the claim that current haulers just want to landfill material because that’s the most cost effective disposal method. I’m in a unique position to say most of my clients (private haulers) are not solely looking to landfill material. They’re already trying very hard to extract extra value for the materials they collection so they’ll be more competitive when bidding. Some of them own landfills. Some of them don’t. Most of them landfill material as a last resort.

I absolutely believe there is opportunity here and hope Rubicon’s distinguishing characteristics were simply missing from this article or somehow under represented.

Also, I’m thrilled that HN has a post about garbage mixed with technology. That’s a combo that I’m incredibly passionate about and love the opportunity to get this community more involved in.

[1] http://www.wm.com/documents/pdfs/oakleaf.pdf

Animats• 12 years ago

Rubicon has created a virtual marketplace where thousands of small, local haulers can bid on portions of huge national contracts.

In other words, it's like Uber - a scheme for getting more work out of low-paid employees.

My own garbage goes out in two wheeled bins - a large one for recyclables, and a small one for trash. Those are picked up by a robotic arm on the trash and recycling trucks. The recycling goes to a large automated sorting center, where DC magnets pull out ferrous metals, AC magnets pull out aluminum, and air and water flotation pulls out paper and plastics. The garbage trucks go to a transfer station where garbage is compressed and sent to a big landfill about 30 miles away. The older landfills nearby are now parks. That open space behind Google HQ used to be a landfill. For a decade or two, new landfill sections are piped for methane, which is used to power generators. The older landfills have completed decaying and the generators have been removed.

It's all heavy machinery, automation, and centralization. Works fine.

benihana• 12 years ago

In other words, it's like Uber - a scheme for getting more work out of low-paid employees.

I refuse to use Uber (and don't need to living in New York City) and from what I've read about the founders, they're scumbags. But what a cynical and dim view of the world to think that Uber is just a 'scheme' to exploit people.

It's all heavy machinery, automation, and centralization. Works fine.

Pack it up guys. Someone on Hacker News has figured it out. Everything relating to garbage is working fine everywhere for everyone. We clearly have no room to improve, cause ya know, it works fine.

It may surprise you to learn this, but not everyone exists in the same situation as you. Here's [1] a picture I took of a not abnormal trash day in Brooklyn. The woman in the picture is about 5'4".

1. http://i.imgur.com/jt461hG.jpg

mhb• 12 years ago

A Better Way to Take Out the Garbage?

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/a-better-way-to-t...

Zigurd• 12 years ago

This is a very likable story. No "sharing" happy horseshit. Disrupting a business that needs it.

My main questions would be whether they can get past their basic idea of aggregating small trash haulers' bids and services. The green tech angle is shiny but will it matter? It has only a tenuous connection to their go to market strategy.

mr__p• 12 years ago

The trash business is a goldmine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HlFKfSS410&feature=youtu.be...

yitchelle• 12 years ago

Just want to share a personal anecdote. My dad, when he was in his 40s and 50s, use to dig a big hole in his backyard every second autumn. This is his landfill where he puts all the biodegradable material from his household and his garden. This includes the autumn leaves, kitchen waste and lawns cuttings. Now his plants and flowers that are growing on top of it are thriving and looks great.

I guess these were the days the local councils were less concern on what we were putting into the environment. Nowadays, I won't be surprise if he would get a big fine for doing this.

classicsnoot• 12 years ago

I currently live in/operate from a minivan, so waste for me is a smaller version of the waste problem on the ISS or in a small, rural community. Namely, do I haul or burn. I decided to sort and haul with extreme prejudice.

Before I took off on my hacker tourism trip I was living in a suburban McMansion. The house was large and empty; my roommate was a recent divorcé whose kids had all moved out. We were both meticulous recyclers, and I sort all organic waste out of the trash and into the earth (a brief aside: I put it all into the ground. Many in the gardening world say this is bad; i disagree because nitrogen.). The net effect was a full recycle bin (two wheel standing bin) once a week and a half full rubbish bin (same design) once a month.

I believe that the key to reducing landfills and capturing trapped/wasted raw materials is an at-home solution. Maybe a sorting and storage device that can be picked up. This concept would be similar to the 2-way power scheme some energy providers use with solar supplement customers.

A Startup Just Got $30M to Shake Up the Garbage Industry

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