Green Startups Say They're Close to Big CE Recycling Deals
STANFORD, Calif. -- Green startups are on the verge of landing big CE recycling deals, their CEOs said at a MIT/Venture Lab conference here late Tuesday.
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RecycleBank, which rewards consumers for recycling by the pound, is close to an agreement for Best Buy to join more than 250 merchants accepting the shopping credits that the company pays, CEO Ron Gonen said. He said RecycleBank’s next big push is into recycling e-waste.
Meanwhile, Green Plug -- whose technology enables standards-based “intelligent” power supplies to start replacing travelers’ piles of AC adapters -- has memos of understanding with Intel, Westinghouse and power-supply maker Delta and is working toward “definitive agreements,” said CEO Frank Paniagua, speaking on a panel with venture capitalists. Now, he said, “the power model in this world, this country, this state is broken.”
Turning environmental concern into profit means providing an “economic value proposition” together with green products, said VC John Denniston, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. There’s “very little evidence” of consumers’ making significant purchase decisions “for green reasons” alone, he said.
RecycleBank plans to start home e-waste collection in the second half of 2008, Gonen told us after the program. “The problem with e-waste today” is that “you can’t do it effectively,” because of the difficulty of arranging a hauler when a consumer happens to want to throw out a device, he said. RecycleBank can solve that by alerting a hauler when one of its members clicks on his company’s website to request a pickup, Gonen said. RecycleBank already provides printable prepaid mailing labels for members to recycle handsets through cellphone recycler CommonGood, in exchange for RecycleBank Dollar rewards.
RecycleBank is “hoping to do a major deal” with Best Buy around March, Gonen said. The arrangement is being made in connection with an expansion from the startup’s markets of northeastern cities into Best Buy’s headquarters city of Minneapolis, he said. Best Buy didn’t reply right away to a request for comment.
RecycleBank Dollars -- figured by software on haulers’ trucks from sensor readings from consumers’ collection cans - - can be spent with Sony among many others, Gonen said in his presentation. Answering an audience question, he said the company avoids promoting self-defeating consumerism by limiting shopping rewards to $35 a month, he said. The company takes a cut of cities’ savings in landfill dumping and will add customized advertising based on a consumer’s choice of merchants for reward redemption, Gonen said.
“DC hubs” with Green Plug’s patented technology will be convenient, reusable, energy efficient and “iconic-looking, like an iPod,” Paniagua said. Intelligent power supplies in home and travel models will recognize how much power a device needs, charge it and turn itself off, he said. Green Plug will give away the firmware that talks to a Green Plug chip in the power supply, he said. “You'll never fry another client” device, Panmiagua, because the power supply won’t allow a connection to the wrong electric current, Paniagua said. “It will actually make charging safer… These power supplies should last 10 years.”