Tucked between other startup teams in a buzzing co-working environment off 15th Street NW, Hunter Hayes works from a single desk at tech incubator and seed venture fund 1776. The repeat entrepreneur and Austin, Texas, native is in the process of raising an important $500,000 seed round from investors, according to an SEC filing, for a business that, while it has never received press coverage in the past, is in ongoing talks with city officials across the U.S.
Hayes is the founder and CEO of ZeroCycle, a cleantech startup whose four-person team is spread among the D.C. area, New York, the Valley and San Diego. Hayes' startup has created a cloud-based software system for local governments that's fused with data and behavioral science inspired technology. ZeroCycle employs a B2D sales model, he explains, based on a per household monthly billing process to cities.
The company's software absorbs, organizes and disseminates information from data streams already managed by city municipalities to give a comprehensive view of how specific neighborhoods are performing when it comes to recycling.
"We're like the Opower of recycling," Hayes told DC Inno.
Founded in 2014, ZeroCycle has signed one major metropolitan center to date: Salt Lake City, Utah. The company will fully launch its program in Salt Lake City in early December, Hayes said. Locally, they're in advanced talks with D.C.'s Office of the Chief Technology Officer toward a potential package.
Hayes declined to comment on specific details related to the startup's ongoing seed fundraising venture.
Context is king
Most U.S. cities already collect waste and recycling data for accounting purposes. They pay the waste management companies based on the weight of trash being dropped off by trucks at landfills. The pricing is typically calculated by on-premise scales that in turn check each truck's weight upon arrival and departure. Waste disposal is traditionally more expensive than recycling. As a result, a product that can turn the tables and spurn a greater amount of recycled material, and therefore a lessening in traditional garbage, has the potential of saving the city on monthly costs. That's where ZeroCycle comes in.
In essence, the company's secret sauce is its innovative algorithm, which can sift through massive caches of city retained data to produce digestible, neighborhood specific waste and recycling information. The software does not use sensors but rather consumes recycling truck route data, information related to the weight of these vehicles based on those aforementioned landfill scales and other data streams before spitting out a finished product: a citywide, normative comparison report for both city officials and homeowners
The blank label ZeroCyle recycling reports are, for lack of a better term , the complimentary product to ZeroCycle's software. The reports are intended for homeowners and sent on behalf of the city (aka the client) through a 3rd party mailing distributor. They appear as a bill, in a white envelope, and come titled directly to homeowners via the governing city locality. Inside lays a simple but visually captivating color coded map which will show how your neighborhood and those that surround it are performing. A normative scale provides a score per neighborhood, providing what in theory will act as a platform for friendly competition and therefore, increased recycling throughout the region.
"Quite frankly, it’s a space [waste management] that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation ... we're trying to change that," Hayes said.
Challenges
During a phone interview, I asked Hayes whether he was concerned about the influence of future waste management legislation. For example, what would (hypothetical) policy that simply forces citizens to improve their recycling efforts via fines do to ZeroCycle. Hayes responded by saying that his software approach offers a much more palatable alternative to what could be considered overreaching legislation. Based on the price point, which he declined to provide, it has the potential to impact communities in a positive fashion without a negative legal and financial burden.
