Tackling Britain’s billion-pound waste problem: a few thoughts on our investment in LITTA
Luke Edis takes a look at our recent addition to our U.K. portfolio: LITTA, a rapidly growing online platform for ethical, on-demand waste collection.
We recently announced the latest addition to our U.K. portfolio: LITTA is an online platform where both consumers and businesses can book same day removal of bulky rubbish via Litta’s network of vetted and ethical waste removal firms.
We’ve seen a notable increase in recent years in the number of entrepreneurs tackling the environmental challenges facing industries, cities, and societies. Social Value Portal, which provides organisations with a platform to quantify social and environmental impact, and Luxury Promise, which is seeking to drive the circular economy within the luxury industry, are two investments made by Beringea in 2020 that reflected this growing trend.
And LITTA is a business that consolidates our focus upon the opportunity presented by providing digital solutions to environmental challenges. In this article, I delve into a few of the reasons that we believe this is a business with tremendous potential for growth, innovation, and impact.
Fly-tipping: a perennial problem in need of an urgent solution
Fly-tipping certainly isn’t a glamorous problem, but it is one that leaves a costly and damaging mark. According to the latest figures from DEFRA, local authorities in England dealt with nearly 1m fly-tipping incidents in a single year, with London experiencing the highest number of incidents relative to its population.
Founded in London in 2017 by Aaron Georgiou, who was later joined by Alexie Crassas and Chris Yiannopoulos, LITTA has put the perennial problem of fly-tipping squarely in its sights and its digital platform neatly tackles many of the historic challenges that have led to the misuse of waste in the U.K.
To understand this problem, it’s worth highlighting that 65% of fly-tips involve household waste, and the waste typically being illegally dumped was equivalent to a ‘small van load’. The issue, therefore, clearly lies with homeowners failing to dispose of bulky rubbish.
A digital platform for consumers, businesses, and suppliers
This is where LITTA comes into its own. Organising the removal of bulky waste has often been a time-consuming process that typically involves using clunky websites with little insight into who will be collecting your rubbish and how they’ll be getting rid of it.
Whether using local council services that have struggled to keep pace with the shift online or attempting to find the details for a ‘man with a van’ who may not have a website nor a public record of their credentials, the options have been less than ideal. LITTA, however, enables any consumer or business with bulky rubbish to access immediately a network of vetted suppliers who can arrange a same-day collection that guarantees an ethical disposal.
We have also been impressed by the work that LITTA has done with its network of more than 200 trusted carriers. For these waste removal specialists, who ensure that items are diverted from landfill wherever possible, LITTA’s online platform provides a valuable tool for reaching new customers, particularly millennial consumers who are accustomed to digital-first experiences.
In a world where waste crime costs the U.K. more than £1bn annually, LITTA provides a truly transformative solution that ensures waste can be easily diverted to the proper channels for removal. It’s no coincidence that 96 per cent of items cleared through LITTA are diverted from landfill.
A driven team in an archaic market now has the fuel for growth
Spotting a clear opportunity, Aaron, Chris, and Alexie have worked tirelessly to build a dynamic team that is striving to build a product that resonates with consumers and enables the digital transformation of the waste management industry. And this is all while bootstrapping the business!
We were remarkably impressed during our due diligence to find that LITTA had an average Trustpilot score of 5.0 out of 5.0 across more than 2,500 reviews. Early-stage companies are normally ironing out the kinks while scaling up, so it is genuinely exceptional to find a business that has received 5 stars in 98 per cent of its Trustpilot reviews.
Given how well the LITTA team has been able to operate within the constraints of bootstrapped growth, there is tremendous potential for our investment to help them consolidate their position as the go-to platform for rubbish removal and tackle Britain’s billion-pound waste problem in the process.
