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We welcome Daniel O’Connor to the podium to tell his story...
Daniel is the proud founder of Sustainability Entrepreneur. He is a man who has dedicated his adult life to resource efficiency and ending the curse of wastefulness through his platform Warp It. He has been on a very interesting business journey, one that he has shared with us below.
He is retelling this story for the benefit of other Sustainability Entrepreneurs out there who want to take forward steps, make a change, and solve problems.
The start of the journey
Back in the early 2000s, I was working in waste. I used to manage the waste for facilities where there was so, so much waste, and within that waste, were things that you and I would obviously deem reusable and useful. I was sure that other people would still want these things, but I knew that because of time and space pressures, the organisation felt forced to dispose of items instead of seeking a new home for them.
The benefits of reuse suddenly became clear to me. You avoid waste, that’s key. But, you can multiply your positive effective by redirecting the item to someone who was instead going to buy a new version of the item. You’re going to stop the manufacture and transport of that new item, in effect. All of that embedded carbon, you’re going to avoid it! Reuse was suddenly on my mind.
I was so shocked and horrified
When I say there was ‘so much waste’, I’m putting it gently. Over the years, I saw thousands of chairs, desks, computers, microwaves, cabinets and who knows what else, face a life sentence by being sent to the landfill. For what purpose?
I became incredibly familiar with the problem. Every day I saw it, and it was on my mind, so eventually, the solution started forming in my mind. One day, it hit me, ‘I need a communication mechanism so that organisation can talk to each other about surplus assets!’.
I wanted to make sure that a platform existed to find homes for things before they were thrown out. So, I approached some software developers with my problem and we came up with a solution, along the lines of eBay. I’d previously been buying and selling camper vans on eBay, so I knew the system well and I really like it. I felt that I could apply something similar to large organisations with great success.
I needed support
I had no money and the banks wouldn’t help to fund me. I entered competitions and through this route, I managed to secure £7,000, which allowed me to build a minimum viable product. I wanted a basic version of my idea to test on relevant people because I had to start small and prove the concept and service to others. A friend told me about a local council restructure, and I knew that I could help them. They were a perfect fit, and right at the start of their restructure, so they could benefit from the product and I could use their feedback and needs to develop the features.
With hindsight, I think perhaps the council might even have funded my idea if I’d pitched it right, and I know now that others have done the same.
Start small….
My first organisation was the Sunderland City Council. They got on board, and immediately the results were great. Next, we invited their partners around the city to join the system, such as the healthcare service and the university. At this point, I was thinking ‘If I can get organisations to join in the same city, I can get them to connect with each other, and if we have loads of organisations in the city, we can build a citywide model’.
We took this idea, and we built a marketplace. With this, staff within organisations could swap and trade surplus assets with each other. Not long after, we opened it up so that organisations could make friend requests in their city and region, to create extra marketplaces for assets.
It all worked out!
Without really realising it, I’d become a sustainability entrepreneur, however, I didn’t leave my job until I had proved the model was commercially viable. I knew the idea worked and could help people, but I had to make a living from it. Fortunately, that happened with Warp It.
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