Trash Lucky

Problem:

Every year human dumps 8 million tons of plastics into the oceans. Thailand, a top-5 ocean polluter, lacks formal recycling infrastructure. Only few people sort their wastes. Given the small value of plastic wastes, people litter them carelessly.

Solution:

Trash Lucky offers Trash-to-Raffle program, allowing people and businesses to sort and submit their recyclables in exchange for its raffle tickets for winning cash or gold. Trash Lucky sells the recyclables people have submitted to recycling factories and share the income with the people via raffle prizes. Under this revenue sharing model, the more recyclables everyone submits the higher the prize value. The more recyclables you submit the higher the chance of you winning the raffle. Recycling factory converts recyclables it has bought into raw materials for new products.

Impact:

Scaling this solution globally would substantially increase the recycling rate and decrease the leakage of plastic wastes into our nature.

Only 9% of plastic ever created has been recycled while the majority ends up elsewhere. Aside from landfills, 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the oceans every year. It is estimated that there will be more plastics than fish, by weight, by 2050. Asian countries contribute 60% of plastic pollution in the oceans. 

Thailand, a top-5 ocean polluter, lacks formal recycling infrastructure. The municipality does not have recycling garbage truck. Instead, all types of trash is pooled into the same truck. Thus, people do not sort their waste and recycling is left to the informal sector such as waste pickers and itinerant waste buyers.

Often, recyclables travel, via garbage truck, from mixed garbage bins to landfill for waste picker to scavenge and trade through the supply chain of itinerant waste buyer, material recovery factory, and finally recycling factory. The detour not only increases the cost of recycling but also emits unnecessary carbon.

Reducing and reusing are superior solution than recycling. However, given our addiction to plastic and the forecasted increase in its consumption, efficient recycling is also needed. Every Thai will benefit if consumers sort their recyclables and a more direct path to recycling factory is available.

We plan to improve the lives across Southeast Asia by diverting plastic waste from landfills and oceans.

Initially, we will target the “moderate environmentalists” in Bangkok who want to recycle but lack an efficient or reliable way to recycle. On the “green” spectrum, these “moderate environmentalists” have already begun reducing their consumption of single-use plastic but are still far from being “zero waste”. They still depend on the convenience that plastic packaging provides but want to ensure that used plastics get recycled. Our recycling program will fill in the gap that city’s waste management does not provide.

Once on-board, we plan to encourage these “moderate environmentalists” to be our ambassadors, evangelizing our recycling lotto to the mass who loves buying lottery. The government sells an average of 50 million lottery tickets during each round of its bi-monthly lottery. With 70 million population, it is as if every Thai buys an average of 0.7 tickets per round. If we can make recycling lotto successful, we could drastically reduce the amount of plastic waste that may end up in the ocean.

Once we find success in Thailand, we will expand our service across Southeast Asia using a similar roll-out strategy.

Trash Lucky incentivizes people and businesses to recycle by allowing them to exchange recyclables with its raffles to win prizes such as gold or cash. Participants can mail in sorted recyclables and earn points based on the amount and the type of recyclables submitted. The points are converted to raffles and the winning numbers are drawn monthly. Alternative to the raffle, participants have an option to convert their points into benefits such as discounts on eco-friendly products.

People can mail in their recyclables in two ways. One, people can pack recyclables in any box and ship it through any logistic provider. Two, people can buy our Recycling Box Bundle, which includes a box for collecting recyclables and shipping to and from their door. Our recycling box comes in various sizes depending on the customer’s needs. We work with local couriers, similar to DHL, to provide door-to-door shipping service.

For businesses, we provide free pickup service of recyclables through our partnered waste trader who regularly drive their trucks across Bangkok to buy recyclables. We aggregate the pickup requests, optimize route, and dispatch a partner. At each pickup, the partner records the amount and type of recyclables obtained. We assign points to the businesses based on the recorded transaction.

While our logistic model is not carbon neutral, it shortens the route plastics currently travels through various detours from garbage bins to recycling factory. Thus, the model decreases carbon emission and cost of recycling in the ecosystem.

We plan to develop a technology platform that connects us with our customers and partners. Each customer and partner can create an account on our website or smartphone app. Through the account, customers can buy our Recycling Box Bundle, request pickups of their recyclables, invite friends to the program, track their points and recycling activities, and participate in our raffle draw.

Through our partner app, each partnered waste trader can see and fulfill the order our system has dispatched. Partners uses the app to record details of each recyclables pickup and view their account activities. 

Our admin platform is the main controller that manages customer and partner accounts, recycling activities, and raffle draws. 

We sell, to the recycling factories and partnered waste traders, the recyclables people have traded for raffles. We use part of the income to fund the raffle prizes. Given the revenue sharing model, the more trash people recycle, the higher the prize.

The solution is an innovation of new business model that aims to create so much value in plastic wastes that people will hesitate to mindlessly discard them. Instead, people will collect and redeem recyclables for our raffle tickets that could win them a million Thai Baht or $33,333, the value of the grand prize we aim to eventually increase to. By incentivizing people to sort recyclables upstream, it not only reduces the cost of recycling in the ecosystem but also increases the recycling rate. Moreover, by providing a more direct path from trash bin to recycling factory, we would decrease carbon emissions.

Trash Bank or “Trash-for-Eggs” programs in the present are a great start but do not offer a big enough incentive and has not create enough social buzz to change the public’s perception on the value of recyclables. In 1951, when Taiwan launched its Uniform Invoice Lottery with 7 figure payouts to incentivize consumers to ask for receipts from businesses, it increased tax collection by 75% from the previous year. We aim to increase the recycling rate by a similar scale when we have enough funding, sponsorship, or revenue to fund the high raffle payout.

Our solution is a new business model that relies on existing technology of building e-commerce website and mobile app that connects a two-sided market to make it more efficient. There are four components to our technology platform: customer app, partner app, our website, and our admin platform. Our platform will be available on website, iOS, and Android.

Customer can use either the web app or mobile app to create an account, make purchases, request pickups of recyclables, track their recycling activities, redeem their points, and participate in raffle draws.

Partnered waste traders can use the partner app to accept and fulfill the requests for recyclables pickup our system has aggregated. Partners use the same app to record transactions, view their activities, and make the payment to Trash Lucky for the recyclables they obtained from customers on the platform. The flow is as such:

1. Customer gives recyclables to our partner who records the transaction

2. Our system assigns points to customer 

3. Partner pays us for recyclables it has obtained

For transactions that do not involve our partners, the admin platform allows our staff to efficiently record the amount and the type of recyclables users have submitted. Consequently, our system automatically credits customer accounts with the appropriate points. Our operational platform would also track our inventory of recyclables and check for the market price to identify the optimal time for selling the recyclables we have accumulated. 

The technology platform would allow us to scale our customer base and operation across Southeast Asia.

Our solution provides higher incentive for recycling compared to existing options of discarding the recyclables or selling them to itinerant waste buyers who usually give lowball offers. Given the popularity of lottery in Thailand, Trash-to-Raffle program should be able to urge people to take simple action of sorting recyclables. We will help them along the journey by educating them about recycling process, positive impact of circular economy, and raffle and reward of our program.

Our mini-pilot, launched in April 2019, showed promising results. We have seen an office custodian, who previously refused to sort recyclables, transformed into an avid recycler incentivized by the prize money. We have also seen a small restaurant owner who previously did not recycle began to submit 6 kilograms of recyclables every ten days. The two were among raffle winners who earned 1.5x to 50x more than they would have earned by selling recyclables to itinerant waste buyers. Even those who did not win any reward from the raffle draw stated that they would continue to participate in our recycling program as we have “made recycling fun”.

We aim to make recycling a habit for our members as their actions would increase recycling rate and reduce the leakage of plastic wastes into nature. If we achieve this result at a regional scale, Southeast Asia would have a cleaner environment. Thus, improving the physical and mental health of those living in the region.

Since our launch in April 2019, we have 130+ registered accounts. Of the registered accounts, 16 households and 6 businesses have been submitting recyclables. In one year from now, we plan to have a combination of 3,500 households and businesses in Thailand recycling with us. In five years from now, we plan to have a combination of 2.3 million households and businesses across SE Asia recycling with us.

Within the next four to six months we plan to pinpoint early adopters and craft the right services for them. Within the next year, we plan to build enough traction to raise our seed financing round of $500k. The money raised would be used toward scaling our team, increasing our raffle prize from the current $166 to $33,333, and acquiring mainstream customer segment.

Within the next five years, we aim to raise our series B financing to fund our expansion across SE Asia. We plan to offer our recycling program to at least 2.3 million households and businesses across Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. 

The main barriers to success for the next year is the limited resources of brain power, time, and funding. 

We only have a team of two co-founders and one summer intern to work on solving the complex problem of changing people’s behavior in order to increase recycling rate. While we are understaffed, we also feel uncomfortable adding headcount before having clearly identified and acquired ample early adopters of our solution. Thus, we often stretch ourselves thin, feeling that we do not have enough time to execute all of our weekly tasks. 

I am personally investing $66,000 into the company and trying to make it last for at least a year. Given the limited budget, we can only afford setting a meager raffle prize, which is not powerful enough to incentive a large crowd of people to change their behaviors or habits. The small traction makes it difficult to convince talents, sponsors, partners, and investors to join our mission.

If we can get through the first year and display enough traction in Bangkok, the barriers during the following four years would be scaling efficiently across Thailand and Southeast Asia. The new challenge at that point would be “crossing the chasm” to gain adoption from the mass market. We would need sufficient funding to hire the right talents and to invest in the right marketing activities. We would also need to have a technology platform that can scale our business efficiently.

We plan to bootstrap and iterate through the Customer Discover and Customer Validation Phases of the Lean Startup methodology for the next six to twelve months. We plan to find mentors who can help us on a regular basis by being our "sounding board," making sure we prioritize our time correctly, and keeping us focused on executing the set strategy.

We will be frugal and spend our budget only in the right places. We will build enough traction from early adopters and use the results to raise grants and funding from angel investors. We would then repeat the process for the next several years and raise funds from more formal institutions such as VCs across the globe.

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2 full-time staff (2 Co-Founders)

1 full-time Summer Intern

We are a team of two with over ten years experience in global startups. We are passionate about solving the plastic waste problem. Worrawit, my co-founder, has been tackling the problem since he was young and has received many environmental preservation awards. I, as an avid surfer, dream of plastic-free ocean.

Prior to Trash Lucky, I led a couple of on-demand logistic startups. First, a ride-hailing app called “Easy Taxi,” a Rocket Internet company. After becoming the Country Manager, I doubled the company’s daily transactions within three months. Second, an on-demand trucking app called “Deliveree”. I rotated across three Southeast Asian countries as the Country Manager and helped Deliveree secured $14.5 million in Series-A funding in Q4 2017. I hold an MBA from INSEAD and an MSEE from USC.

Worrawit has five years experience in startups, starting with Easy Taxi where he worked with me. Since then, Worrawit led an operational unit at FoodPanda, a food delivery app, and later became the Head of Operations at Freshket, a marketplace for restaurant food supply, funded by 500 TukTuks (Thailand branch of 500 Startups). Worrawit developed an interest in waste management since his high school years when he started a “Trash Bank,” allowing 2,500 students to trade used plastic bottles for cash. Worrawit was elected as a young envoy of UNEP and given an Outstanding Youth Award in Environment category by the Thai Prince.

Our skills in building startups, managing logistics, and passion for the environment will help us succeed.

We were admitted into 2019 batch of DTAC Accelerate owned by Telenor Group. The accelerator runs a 4-month program that provides startups with supports such as mentorship, workshops, publicity, and funding. DTAC Accelerate was voted as the number one accelerator in Thailand by the local startup community. 

During the on-going program, we work with local and foreign mentors, such as Nir Eyal and Dr. Jacob Greenshpan, in refining various aspects of our business. We practiced our pitches in front of executives from both corporate and startup. We developed methods and worked to validate our customer-problem fit and product-market fit. We will eventually pitch our startup to investors from Asia and abroad at the Demo Day in early September.

Moreover, we have been working with various logistics partners, such as NinjaVan, Get (GoJek Thailand), Lalamove, and Deliveree, to provide our customers with door-to-door pickup service of their recyclable items. Once our customer has packed recyclable items in a box, she simply order and pay the logistics cost. During each shipment, we choose the logistic partner based on the size and volume of the parcel. The logistic partner then fulfills our order along with other orders on its planned route.

Our business model has three revenue streams:

1. We sell, to recycling factory, the recyclables participants have traded us for raffles. 

2. We sell Recycling Box Bundle to people who want the convenience of door-to-door pickup of their recyclables. 

3. We sell recyclables to partnered waste trader who handles the logistics for us.

For the first revenue stream, we use raffle prizes to incentivize people to sort and send us recyclables. The participants are responsible for paying the shipping fee of the recyclables, allowing us to obtain them at no cost. We sell the recyclables to recycling factory and make 100% margin.

For the second revenue stream, people who prioritize convenience may buy our Recycling Box Bundle, which includes three things:

1. A corrugated box you can use for collecting recyclable items. The box is designed for parcel shipping.

2. The cost of mailing an empty box to your home.

3. The cost of picking up a full box from your door.

Lastly, we partner with businesses that trade recyclables to handle pickups of large quantity of recyclables from places such as offices, restaurants, or shopping malls. We aggregate the orders within the same district, optimize route, and forward the information to our partner who would pick up and record the type and the amount of recyclables traded for our raffles. The partner would later pay us a below-market price of the recyclables to compensate for their operational cost.

To reach financial sustainability, we would need to acquire approximately a million household in Thailand to recycle over 300 tons of trash per month with us. In this case, we would be able to generate a monthly revenue of $150,000 by selling recyclables at the average price of $0.50 per kilogram.

We apply to MIT Solve to gain access to experts and experienced entrepreneurs who can help us think through our product and marketing strategies, and help advise on building our scalable technology. The MIT Solve brand will act like a “stamp of approval” to help us build partnerships, find sponsors, raise funds from investors, and acquire talents. Moreover, participating in the MIT Solve event during the UN General Assembly week will help open doors to connect with global leaders from both the public and private sectors. Gaining buy-ins from these global leaders will help accelerate our growth across Thailand and beyond.

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We would like to partner with global leaders in recycling such as TerraCycle. We would love to learn from and get advice on innovating the recycling industry and how to convince people and businesses to recycle for a better world.

Moreover, we would like to partner with global companies such as H&M Group, Danone, and Unilever who have already displayed their commitment to circular economy by partnering with Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We would ask these global companies to sponsor the prizes of our "recycling lotto" or even supply them with recycled plastics to make their new products.

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If we are one of the two teams who share the "up to $50,000 grant," we would use the money to outsource the development of our technology platform. 

We estimate that it would cost about $30,000 to hire an outsourced company in Thailand or in Southeast Asia to develop the first version of our Customer App, Partner App, and WebAdmin. Currently, we are executing manually. Having a technology platform will help us scale our marketing and operating activities.

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