A matter of convenience

Since its founding in 2019, San Francisco Bay Area startup Olyns has given consumers an outlet to put empty bottles and cans to good use through its reverse vending machine (RVM), the Olyns Cube.

For Olyns co-founder and CEO Philip Stanger, the idea originated as a reaction to dismal plastic pollution statistics, and he sought a solution to improve recycling efforts. The answer became the Olyns Cube, a platform that Stanger and his team launched to provide a user-friendly way to curtail plastic waste. Designed for high-traffic locations such as malls and cinemas, the cube unites sustainability, technology and advertising to make recycling convenient. 

Stanger’s expertise lies in technology and advertising, having worked for Apple before starting Olyns. Gaining experience in these disciplines, which he says are parallel to recycling, supplied him with distinct advantages.

“We managed to bring what I think is a fresh perspective to this because we didn’t necessarily have the accepted orthodoxies that were limiting finding a solution,” Stanger says.

Inspired by his experience working in technology and advertising, Stanger was able to devise an RVM that can be economically and environmentally sustainable. Currently, Cubes are located in four Safeway supermarkets in California. Two Cubes also were featured at PepsiCo’s Trash Talk activation at Super Bowl LVI.

Long-term viability

The key to the Cube’s success, Stanger says, is based on a retail media model. Revenue for the machine is sustained through its use of retail media, which is advertising situated near the point of purchase. Stanger says retail media is facing significant growth, while the popularity of online advertising is slowing because of privacy concerns. In the case of the Olyns Cube, retail media comes in the form of 15-second full-motion videos on the Cube’s 65-inch screen. This model is what Stanger says makes the cube financially viable in the long run.

“One of the big problems with recycling, of course, is not the fact that people don’t want to do it—everybody wants to do it," Stanger says. "It’s just that they need to have convenience, they need to have the incentives, and then there’s got to be some sort of operational elements that can support it in an efficient way. And in a lot of cases, unless there is government sponsorship in those bottle bill states, it hasn’t existed.”

Advertisers featured on the cube include clothing, food and beverage and banking companies. Stanger says all of the companies featured in advertisements on the Cube are interested in sustainable products and environmental, social and governance investing.

He adds that the Cube allows these brands to align their messages with a verifiable act of sustainability.

The Olyns Cube also distributes rewards to people who deposit plastic, aluminum or glass beverage containers.

To gain rewards, users must download the Olyns app on their phones. The app comes with a near field communication (NFC) card—think Apple Pay or Google Pay—that can be tapped on a Cube to access it. Once the user places an empty beverage container into a slot, the Cube uses artificial intelligence (AI) sorting technology to identify the size and type of the bottle, dropping it into one of three compartments for plastic, aluminum or glass.

Users in bottle bill states, including California and nine other states, would receive money based on state regulations. The money is processed through PayPal, and the user decides whether to put it into a PayPal account or send it to a credit card.

Olyns also is looking to expand to other nonbottle bill states. For these states, the company is deciding how to apply gamification aspects to create a randomized reward system instead.

“We managed to bring what I think is a fresh perspective to this because we didn’t necessarily have the accepted orthodoxies that were limiting finding a solution.” – Philip Stanger, CEO, Olyns

Positive reception

The app contains two other notable functions to incentivize recycling: a community leaderboard that compares a user’s recycling progress with others and an environmental impact dashboard that shows a user his or her environmental contributions. The dashboard shows the number of deposited containers, the amount of CO2 saved and the amount of waste diverted from landfills, oceans and incineration. Stanger says this is a critical feature to reassure those who want an identifiable impact of recycling.

“We’re providing that feedback and giving people that agency to understand that this action is not meaningless, that there is benefit,” Stanger says. “No matter how small it may seem, it does add up because what we do is we give the individual’s contribution as well as Olyns’ contribution as a community, and people can then see that that individual contribution adds up to quite a significant amount once it’s added to the community.”

Olyns ensures proper Cube maintenance through its use of the gig economy, contracting with freelance workers much like ride-share services do. The enrolled workers, called “sherpas,” empty Cubes that reach full capacity and take the contents to Olyns or a recycling processor. When the app indicates a Cube is full using a color-coded system, a sherpa can claim it. Once he or she arrives, the sherpa taps the Cube with the NFC card on his or her Olyns app, which is different than a standard user’s card, to open the machine. Using the app, the sherpa must scan the QR code on each bag within the machine to associate the bags with the sherpa, who is paid upon delivering them.

The recyclable bottles that reach a processor are well-sorted and not contaminated because of the AI sorting technology, according to Olyns. They also have low levels of liquid.

So far, Stanger says reception for the Cube has been overwhelmingly positive. The RVMs have been filling up faster than the Olyns team thought, sometimes several times per day. According to Olyns, a single Cube can compress and store more than 1,000 plastic containers, 850 aluminum cans and 50 glass bottles and can deliver 2 metric tons of clean recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) per year. Olyns now is focused on hardware design and reaching out to more locations.

What’s next?

Stanger says he expects several dozen more Cubes in the Bay Area by the end of the year. Olyns also is working to introduce pilot projects outside of California, including one in the South featuring 25 machines that could be established near the end of the year, he says.

Olyns plans to continue drafting new Cube designs that offer recycling for other products besides beverage bottles. Stanger says Olyns will collaborate with a major candy manufacturer to create a version of the Cube that can recycle plastic candy boxes. The Cube potentially could be used to collect other recyclables, such as shampoo and detergent containers.

With new Cube locations as well as new machine versions and collaborations on the horizon, Olyns plans to maintain its growth within the recycling industry.

“I have been involved in technology a lot of my life with different startups, and I have not had an experience that has been moving this fast, has had this much positive reception really in my career,” Stanger says. “So, obviously, we’ve tapped into a need. And we would like to satisfy that need as fast as possible.”

The author interned with Recycling Today Media Group. A version of this article first ran on www.RecyclingToday.com.