Another Trashy Newsletter
Let’s Talk Waste Management.

If you haven’t yet visited your local municipal landfill, I’d highly recommend it. In fact, visiting the dump was my favorite field trip in K-12. Watching bulldozers scale mountains of plastic gave me a much better sense of the power of aggregated small impacts, and of the urgency with which the garbage crisis must be solved. More than half the world’s population does not have access to regular trash collection. This wreaks havoc on the environment, as toxic chemicals enter groundwater and the atmosphere. Global waste production is on pace to triple by 2100, so this problem shows no signs of letting up.
Environmental consequences aside, this increase in trash production presents an economic difficulty for cities in developing countries, which already spend 20% to 50% of their budgets on waste management. The global cost of managing this trash is expected to increase to $375b by 2025, an 80% increase from 2010 levels. High costs, low efficiency, and high urgency will produce opportunities for impact investors to help reduce the environmental and social damage caused by this trash.
Jeff Seidl, Analyst



Rubicon Global, the “Uber of trash,” has raised a $11.7M Series A. The company seeks to connect waste producers with local neighborhood haulers in order to make garbage collection cheaper and more sustainable. Its platform gives customers transparency into where their waste management spending is going and allows them to monitor collection trucks in real time along optimized routes.
Read On

After the Beirut garbage crisis, Lebanese designers created products out of the waste around them. Dezeen magazine recently compiled their top 8 picks.
Read On

Curious about apps that help you recycle? Companies such as iRecycle, RecycleNation, and Litterati are looking to increase recycling through user engagement. The garbage crisis is all about cumulative small impacts — by making it easier for individuals to do their part, these apps stand to significantly increase recycling rates.
Also, The Wall Street Journal wants to know how much you know about ethical investing. Take the quiz (and maybe even debunk some personal misconceptions) here.

