“uRecycle” and The Efficient Collection of Plastic Bottles

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“The world goes plastic” (Arthur Baum, 1950). Not too long-ago, plastic was praised as “the material of a thousand uses” and due to its prosperous outlooks, the chemical managed to conquer the world in record-time. Undoubtedly, the multifunctionality of plastic proved broadly beneficial in many fields. The inefficiency to dispose of this chemical, however, now confronts mankind with one of the biggest challenges ever faced, namely, climate change and specifically the pollution of our oceans.

Goal

uRecylce aims at attacking the void in the infrastructure that should cater for the re-collection and recycling of plastic bottles. Creating stimuli and incentives for consumers to correctly dispose of their empty plastic bottles, will become the most important and foremost efficient solution of reducing plastic waste and tackling the subsequent pollution of our planet. uRecylce´s goal is to create exactly these incentives by the following methods.

Unique Selling Proposition

What at first sight seems to be a typical reverse vending machine for empty plastic bottles placed in a supermarket, is actually much more. The machines provided by uRecycle incorporate a self-financing mechanism that strongly sets them apart from usual reverse vending machines. Firstly, the screen installed in the uRecycle machines serve as an interface that allows for qualitative data-collection and customer behavior analysis. By gathering this data and attracting additional customers via awarding vouchers and discounts, uRecycle´s service works without an initial mark-up on bottle prices.

Results

After intensive market research, numerous expert interviews, and hypothesis testing, we reached a point where we have a compelling value proposition for all our customer segments. We create an advertising platform that has a recycling service at its core. This enables advertisers to implement sales promotions at the point of sale. Our end-customer benefits from the service as they will be receiving rewards, where there were previously none. Finally and most importantly, the whole system will add value to all other stakeholders, as it will trigger a striking change regarding the separate plastic-collection and -recycling quotas in Austria.

Cooperation Partner

• uRecycle

Contact Person

• Simeon Popov
  h11718062@s.wu.ac.at

Student Team

• Simeon Popov, Friedrich Ludwig, Phillipp Urch, Fabian Fuchs and Christoph Walter

Project Manager

• Sophie Tuong-Vi Quach

• Alexander Staub