Partnerships Between Bike and Truck Haulers & Composting for Multi-Family Residents

Hinweis der Redaktion

1. Emphasis on the importance of partnerships in how Scraps was created and has grown… In particular our partnership with a truck-based hauler, but also partnerships in general…
2. So first - the quick overview: we’re Scraps, bike-powered compost pickup service in Denver, founded right after USCC 2017, about to turn 1 year old. Fill a gap – not compete. Partnership, not a parallel system. Key focus: give people who live in multifamily buildings – condos & apts with more than seven units – the chance to compost. (and pick up others along the way) …and do it without adding more heavy infrastructure to our system, or more vehicles to our congested streets, more pollution and GHGs to the atmosphere. Instead LEVERAGE the existing infrastructure through our low-impact bike-based approach… and partnerships galore.(excited to share our approach with you…)
3. More quick info: we did our first small event in May 2017, ran our very first route (with one customer) in June, had our official launch party in July – with more than 120 people in attendance to celebrate! At the time of launch we’d collected just over 3,000 pounds in a month.
4. From one customer we’ve grown to more than 120 in just seven months of pickups, and we have more than 300 total “pre-subscribers.” (some of whom we are slowly able to absorb into our membership base as we grow). and we’ve collected nearly 50K of compostables, all by bike (48,458.3 lbs.). we’ve pedaled more than 2,000 miles, and we’re working with more than 25 multi-family buildings. at our last “reporting period (EOY2017) we’d kept the equivalent of 17 metric tons of CO2e out of the atmosphere through composting (according to EPA WARM calculator) Our facebook following has grown to more than 450 and our instagram to more than 530 in just a few months… …and officially have first two equity investors as of January 1st! Small scale, but hugely important to our growth.
5. why start this company? It’s a familiar story: we saw a gap that needed filling – a market that wasn’t being served – and we saw a way to do it. (and I’d never do it any other way, really)
6. And of course we thought access to compost services was an important service to offer (in a minute I’ll dive into our approach), and that our lean, innovative, sustainable & scrappy model was a great way to introduce compost pickup service to an underserved market.
7. the Mile High City has one of the worst waste diversion rates in the country – 20 percent. Our 2020 sustainability goal is simply to reach national average…!?!? How uninspiring and unambitious. And insufficient. Nearly 50 percent of what we throw away is compostable. We don’t have zero-waste ordinances or pay-as-you-throw legislation or anything. The city offers a limited compost collection service to single-family homes (recently expanded to include the entire city) for a fee, and one commercial hauler offers compost pickup for businesses. It’s not enough. And the city’s population has been experiencing rapid, continuous growth. 16,000 new Denver residents since 2010 (and 10,000 new housing units). TOTAL: 693,000 people (in Denver County) (Colorado’s population grew by 11 percent from 2009 to 2016 to 5.55 million residents.)
8. the market (gap) we focus on: multifamily. Buildings with more than seven units. Condos and apartments. There are tens of thousands of people living in MFUs all over the city. They’re considered businesses, which don’t even have to recycle in Denver, let alone compost. I was living in a condo and unable to find a way to compost, and I had a hunch that there were others like me all over the city. (turns out there are of course - like Anne here  )
9. I should note we also service restaurants, offices and other businesses, as well as single-family homes who opted for our service before the city expanded, and have stayed with us. And in this particular photo, we’re outside the office of Denver Food Rescue, a bike-based food rescue & redistribution program that has been a total local inspiration for how Scraps grows. I’m now a member of the DFR board Leadership Circle, a volunteer rider with DFR, and Scraps services their office, promotes their work and will soon have an ad panel on their trailers. We give every new subscriber the option to donate to Denver Food Rescue (or to BikeDenver) and every month we cut them a check 50-50. Our partnership has gone totally full-circle with DFR. We have something similar with our pay processor, Pay Simple – we compost for their office of 130+ employees, and they’ve waived our $75 monthly service fees in exchange!
10. And so far, the vast majority of our customers have come to us, either because they heard about us on social media, or found us through word-of-mouth. We’ve done very little door-to-door marketing or paid outreach, although we’re experimenting with small-scale direct marketing now to see if it pays dividends.
11. bikes/trikes. Egress. Bins. Bin size. (no big bin on site) Serve individual members. Don’t need whole building account. Provide education/motivation. Take the worry off shoulders of PMs, take part of their trash problem off their plates. Appeal to greener-minded developments.
12. we work with managers and HOAs to tailor our service to fit their needs. We’ll make just about any “designated pickup spot” work.
13. A bit more on how we work: we leverage the existing system, without adding more “heavy” infrastructure to it, instead using low-impact, carbon-neutral, pedal-powered transport. You can think of our bike routes as veins from the existing arteries of the compost hauling system in Denver. Or, think of us as a “last-mile solution” (to borrow from public transit language) to help folks who don’t have access to that existing compost-collecting system gain access to it.
14. And we don’t add additional cost to our partners – in fact, if our contribution to their bins requires an additional pickup, we cover the cost. We make money by charging our “members” monthly fees for pickup. And by using bikes and leveraging partnerships, among other aspects of our approach, we try to keep our costs low and pass on that savings to our members. (some of our new drawings from our illustrator!)
15. Alpine Waste = critical partnership / supporter of our approach. One of the very first people I approached was the CEO of Alpine Waste. Wanted to share this idea with him, give him the chance to object, ideally show him that we aimed not to compete but to fill in gaps, and that the partnerships we planned to develop with Alpine customers and eventually directly with Alpine would benefit their company without costing or risking anything. They totally loved the idea, thankfully. Almost as important as Alpine’s blessing of this approach: our direct partnerships with existing commercial customers of Alpine. These are our “dropoff partners,” and they’re crucial. This image actually shows one of our newest dropoff partners, Hop Alley, whom we actually “converted” from a Scraps pickup customer to a dropoff partner. This is the first time we’ve “graduated” a customer to this status. This bin is actually paid for by Scraps, and we regulate how often Alpine picks it up. We just added the next door restaurant Fish n’ Beer, and when I return we’re bringing a café across the street on board. This bin has become the hub for our home neighborhood, RiNo, or River North, more appropriately known as Five Points.
16. Our first dropoff partner was The Alliance Center – the job I quit – where we dropped nearly 40K of compostables in our first months of operation! Recently formed partnership with new restaurant Urban Farmer, right downtown in Denver, and Alliance is now more of an “emergency overflow” dropoff partner in this neighborhood (for no other reason than UF asked for exclusivity here, and brings us value in return). UF = one of newest, most sustainable restaurants in Denver. They “get it.” Already brought them nearly 10K in just a few weeks. They’re hosting our first birthday in Denver as well, if anyone’s around next month.
17. we really thrive on collaboration. Not only does it help us grow – it helped us to even launch, and overcome some of the barriers of high capital outlays that prevent small-scale operations from getting started. Because of this conference (and a connection through Justin – thank you!), we partnered with BioBag to get 100 UmiMax bins and 500 3-gallon liners to get our residential program launched, plus hundreds of larger-size liners donated for our first big event with The Big Wonderful. we just closed our end-of-year survey period Friday, which included several questions regarding the BioBag bins & liners, and once we analyze the results we’ll have valuable information for BioBag as they work to gain market share in the multi-family sector from a manufacturer’s standpoint.
18. On the bike-powered mobility side, if it weren’t for a perfectly-timed chance encounter with the owner of Main Street Pedicabs, we may not have gotten ourselves a locally-made, sturdy pedal-powered trike, for an incredibly generous price & payment plan. And similar to Alpine, we’re good marketing for Main Street, who is working to expand its market reach and reputation beyond just pedicabs.
19. It’s critical that we have a place that makes sense for our trikes to “sleep at night.” Build more efficient routes. Live right in the dense neighborhoods we service. Commercial real estate in Denver is scarce and pricey, esp. if we want to be in the downtown areas we serve. PARTNERSHIPS ARE KEY. (can’t overstate this!) This shed is colocated at the Denver Urban Garden flagship community garden by their office in Five Points. The partnership that built it took months and months to nurture. We are working with DUG to revamp and manage their garden compost program (not with what we collect, which is of course commercial), and filling a need for them in that way. They built a shed for us and we get to use it, at cost, paid for in monthly instalments with zero interest over the course of the year (for about $2,700 total). Working toward more sheds like this in other gardens in key areas we service, for more trikes, to build even tighter, more hyper-localized routes, in 2018.
20. partnerships with developers are becoming key to strategic growth. Zeppelin example. Several complexes, residential, commercial & mixed, in our most important neighborhood and what’s called the “hottest” area in Denver, RiNo. Working toward coverage of all Zeppelin properties, including hundreds of residents & more than 100 commercial businesses / office tenants. Not to mention alignment with progressive, environmentally conscious developer.
21. even our events = require partnerships with local truck based haulers. Alpine > American Disposal. Sub-contract right-sized rolloffs. Contracts to ensure roll-offs will go to designated end point. Trash, recycle, compost. The Big Wonderful = biggest event contract.
22. We’ve done four so far, and we are now official zero-waste partner lined up to do all 2018 events in their series. Diverted thousands of pounds of material from the landfill to be composted or recycled, with the help of dozens of volunteers.
23. a bit more about why we do things this way… we give people in MFUs same opportunity as single-family homes – price-wise, and in terms of what they can compost. Full range of commercially compostable material, starting at $10/month – just a quarter more than what single-family homes pay monthly for the city’s compost pickup program.
24. To sum up what’s working for us: partnerships. Collaboration. Flexibility. Well-defined niche. First to market. Staying focused on being hyper-local. Giving & showing value to our members in multiple ways (not just pickups, but environmental impact, appealing to their customers and corporate values, ongoing education, etc.) Lean approach to building our business = greater & greater efficiency, achieved through incremental, low-risk / low-cost tweaks. Most of all, we’re scrappy. 
25. our partners at Alpine tell us that we’re like free marketing for them, and we try to be. Alpine was founded as a company focused on recycling & sustainability – first to offer single-stream recycling in Denver, and only truck hauler to offer compost pickup. partnership with us reinforces that brand. We’ve been on 9News, in the Denverite, BusinessDen, 5280 Magazine, even front page article of Denver Post.
26. And in December we won the 2017 “Implementer” award from the City of Denver Office of Sustainability. Every chance we get, we plug Alpine (as well as our dropoff partners & other partners), because if it weren’t for them, we couldn’t make this work.