[Re] Waste gets traction solving plastic problems for companies
A plastic-recycling startup created in its founder's garage during the pandemic has gained enough traction to contemplate expansion across Canada by 2024.
[Re] Waste collects and recycles plastic waste on behalf of businesses and other organizations, transforming material that can't be conventionally recycled into products its clients can either use or sell.
"The goal is taking this waste, commercializing it, and providing our clients with opportunities to generate revenue from their waste, as opposed to just looking at it as an expense to work with [Re] Waste," founder Corey Saban told Taproot.
For a flat monthly fee, clients receive collection bins that [Re] Waste picks up or has shipped to its processing facility in southeast Edmonton. It weighs the bins to generate a monthly sustainability report showing how much plastic has been diverted from landfill, then it turns the plastic into something the company can use, while living up to its obligations under Extended Producer Responsibility protocols.
How [Re] Waste recycles the plastic is tailored to the client. Goodwill Industries, for instance, accumulates large volumes of plastic from community donations that [Re] Waste transforms into a variety of products the organization can use in its stores and processing facilities, including construction materials (hexagon tiles and large sheets for wall protection), concrete parking curbs, and — in the near future — concrete planters.
"This is a great example of a massive effort to advance the (circular economy) in Alberta throught the positive power of partnerships and innovation!" wrote Mortimer Capriles, director of sustainability and innovation for Goodwill Industries of Alberta, in response to a post about [Re] Waste's living wall project at the Calgary Impact Centre.
Value Buds became [Re] Waste's first commercial client, enlisting the company to transform waste such as the plastic jars used for packaging into garbage cans and vape-card holders. The cannabis retailer was already developing a recycling program to deal with its large volumes of plastic waste (a major issue for the cannabis industry as a whole) when it heard about Saban's experiments to turn plastic garbage into useful objects.
[Re] Waste's growing client base includes IKEA (for which it transforms packaging waste into plastic flakes or pellets) and other businesses in the cannabis industry. A number of American multinationals have also expressed interest. Saban said [Re] Waste will be in five regions of Canada by 2024, and he hopes to expand stateside in the near future, too.
As the startup grows, Saban is glad to have been accepted to the University of Alberta's Threshold Impact Venture Mentoring Service, which offers guidance to local entrepreneurs. [Re] Waste is also seeking funding to facilitate its expansion plans, which represents a major step in its evolution and a new experience for Saban.
"To work with these multinationals, they want you to serve (more than) just a region, you need to go across Canada or go across the States to work with them — and that was our commitment," he said.
