Recyclops plans technological, company expansion with new investment

Recyclops, a Utah-based recycling and sustainability company, has secured an investment from the Clorox Co. and is partnering with Clorox brand Glad to serve additional American households.

Recyclops, founded in 2014, has a similar business model to a company like Uber. Consumers without access to local recycling services place their recyclables in clear plastic bags and use Recyclops’ website to schedule collection. Recyclops works with nearby material recovery facilities, or MRFs, allowing for proper disposal of recyclables and enabling the company to expand recycling access.

Founder and CEO Ryan Smith had the idea for Recyclops in college when his was living in a building that did not provide recycling services.

“I always grew up recycling,” Smith says. “It wasn't something I ever thought about, it was just something that I did. And that changed when I was in college. I remember this moment so vividly,” he says recounting the story of when he went to dispose of a soft drink he bought from a vending machine on campus and realized his apartment didn’t have a recycling bin. “I go out to the dumpster, and there is no recycling dumpster. And that just blew my mind. “

According to a random sample taken by the Recyclops team, out of a thousand U.S. cities, approximately 34 million single-family homes and 16 million apartments don’t have curbside recycling access. This means that for every 10 Americans, four households don’t have curbside recycling access.

Recyclops uses a gig-economy model where drivers use an app to locate, pickup and deposit recyclables from families who are scheduled to have their recycling collected.

While it is not an on-demand service, the company is currently running a pilot program in Dallas that is testing out such a service rather than the scheduled pickups city recycling services provide, Smith says.

With operations in 10 different states across the country, combined with the new investment, Recyclops will be able to expand from 10,000 customers to 100,000 more potential customers, as well as increase its technical flexibility and reach as a company. This allows Recyclops to not only expand its customer base and grow the size of its operation but also provide a basic recycling service to families or municipalities. According to a press release from the Clorox Co., Recyclops diverted more than 3 million pounds of recyclables from the landfill in 2020 alone. Recyclops currently gathers recyclables such as plastics, carboard, glass, metal and paper while looking to expand into food waste and packaging return programs.

“We're experimenting with that right now,” Smith says of the packaging return program. “We started to work a lot with brands that … are delivering something to their consumer that … can't be recycled. So, they create a packaging return program or a textile return program.”

Having a brand such as Clorox backing the company also provides opportunities for Recyclops to build its visibility.

“Clorox is one of the most trusted companies. They bring a lot to the table, and they're a huge company,” Smith says. “Then they also have a national reach, and they're in every grocery store in the country. And it gives us the ability to reach places that we might have a harder time reaching because they have that footprint.”

With the help of the Clorox investment and its partnership with Glad, Recyclops and Smith are looking forward to additional growth, though Smith expresses disbelief about how far the company already has come.

“Literally if you look at where we were seven years ago and where we are today, you'd be like, are those the same company?” says Smith. “We’ve changed a lot. In the last three years is really when we became the company we are today.”