Creating a Market for Waste
Using cycle couriers and electric vehicles, De Clique collects food by-products like coffee grounds, orange peels and other food waste from businesses. Collected as pure waste streams, these by-products are then sold on by De Clique to third party innovators and product manufacturers, who transform them into new products like food ingredients, cosmetics, and biomaterials.
“We are working towards zero-waste cities in which all residual flows are reused.” This initiative helps:
businesses capture the value of organic waste streams to produce new products and build a local bioeconomy
product manufacturers work with a scale of waste streams that would be impossible to achieve alone
cut costs by giving waste producers discounts on the final products made by De Clique and their partners, helping build a circular marketplace
create jobs, by employing people to collect and process organic waste so that it can be used to make new products
De Clique was founded by an experienced entrepreneurial team, including the founders of Binbang, Fairphone, Fietskoeriers and Fungi factory, whose skills complemented one another well.
They began by developing a solid business case and financial plan - the team wanted to ensure that their business model was scalable, so they could apply it to other cities across the world. To avoid scaling a loss-making enterprise, they focused on sales and operations, rather than brand building. They took a data-driven approach to measure the environmental impact of the new products that they make.
As of January 2020, De Clique were collecting and processing around 10 tonnes of organic waste per month, at ‘The Hub’ in Utrecht. The organisation is expanding by opening new ‘Hubs’ in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Leuven in Belgium while exploring further locations" (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2021)
This article provides the framework for how waste can become the foundation of a circular economy. The article discusses how De Clique collects food waste, such as orange peels, and then sells them to local businesses that use these scraps to transform them into new products. The goal of this process is to create zero-waste cities in which all materials are being reused. While this article is focused on food waste rather than manufacturing waste, it does provide a useful insight into the different ways that the scrap produced by businesses can be used and transformed. It also presents the idea that the waste does not necessarily need to be transformed by the company that produces it. The article also discusses how to use data to measure the impact on the ability to reuse the scrap material. This provides an insight into what a potential solution could look like, rather than a physical prototype. A design solution for the problem space could be the amount of material that is diverted and reused, the potential revenue, and the ability to scale with the business.
References:
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2021, February 17). Making new products from urban organic waste streams: De Clique. Ellen MacArthur Foundation
