Recycleopedia.com - helping everyone recycle everything
A website helping you recycle what, how, and where in the UK.
About You
Background Information
First Name
Paul
Last Name
Bearman
Twitter URL
Facebook URL
The competition is only open to people between 18-34 years-old and resident in UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. Does this apply to you
Country of residence of entrepreneur
UK
Tell us about your personal background. Why are you passionate about this issue? Making an idea a reality takes innovation, dedication and strong leadership. Do you have the necessary entrepreneurial skills to realize your vision?
I have always been passionate about green issues generally but came about the problem of easily sorting my waste for recycling at home and work - so I've come up with an easy to use search tool to help everyone recycle more easily.
I'm forever coming up with ideas for businesses, and was always looking for 'the one' - I believe this is it and have been working on Recycleopedia for a couple of years since I thought of it.
Moving from the idea to the actual 'product' has and is hard but I'm dedicated to seeing it through to the first step (national coverage and launch) and far beyond as I truly believe it can help make a difference to how society views and disposes of waste, and create a business in the process.
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Recycleopedia
Organization Website
Organization Country
United Kingdom, XX
Country where this project is creating social impact
United Kingdom
Is your organization a
For‐profit
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Innovation
The Need: What problem are you trying to solve?
Recycleopedia.com was born out of a personal household need to find out more information on recycling different products and putting them in the different bins that we have at home and work, I wanted a simple way to find out where to put different products.
The Solution: What is your solution? Be specific!
It's a website all about recycling built around a user generated and editable database of what, how, and where to recycle your home and business waste. It lets users upload, update and share information on products, and how or where they can be recycled. So everyone can share information on recycling with everyone else across the UK.
The Model: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference; include your primary activities
The search box tells you exactly which bin to place your waste at home, work or out and about, if the waste item is not listed you can easily upload a description and picture to the site for us or other users to work out where it goes, this information is added to the database and is then available to all other users within the search. If you find a new recycling location not listed you can also upload this to be shared with all users too.
The Marketplace: Who are your peers and competitors? Identify others also working to address the needs you are and what differentiates you from them. What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
www.recycle-more is only competitor in the recycling location search marketplace, the other 'non-core' components of Recycleopedia (shop/news/directory) have more competition from various places.
Recycleopedia will be a better product with the user generated input creating a unique tool for all users making it stand out above the rest growing into a complete 'hub' for recycling information and services.
Select the stage that best applies to your business
Operating for less than a year
This Entry is about (Issues)
Social Impact
What is the social impact you have had to date and how you measure it?
Having not promoted Recycleopedia.com fully as it doesn't yet cover all of the UK (on target for a full national launch in May 2012) usage is currently low, but I believe the potential for growth in use and the impact socially is massive - on a personal and household level it will help people recycle more by making it easy and instant to work out what to recycle, and this in turn will help council recycling levels increase and hit targets quicker, saving a lot of landfill and natural resources in the process.
Sustainability
How does your model address financial, social, and environmental sustainability?
I'm hoping Recycleopedia can help towards social and environmental sustainability from a natural resource view point with an increase in people's knowledge, helping them recycle more efficiently, thus collectively reusing and protecting the world's resources.
While the online search will be free to use for anyone, financially on a B2B side I can tap into the fast growing eco/green industry from both businesses working within the sector and businesses that need to work in some way with the sector.
I can also capitalise on the increasingly eco/sustainability aware public with Recycleopedia selling products and services directly or via 3rd parties to users.
Awareness & learning
How do you see social entrepreneurship contributing to the improvement of developing countries?
I imagine that social entrepreneurship has a massive role in developing counties helping to create a collective idea that things can and will be better, with outside companies, charities and countries helping people to achieve this, down to the point of simply helping some people to have a job and survive on a daily basis, overall helping people change their lives for the better, forever.
What aspects of your stay in Uganda as part of the competition do you think you will find most challenging and rewarding?
It'll be great to see how it's done in Uganda and the help that other countries, companies & charities bring, it'll be extremely personally rewarding to help in even a small way somehow and very interesting to see if I can bring any ideas into it myself at the time or in the future - it'll set my brain off into thinking mode no doubt!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| search_box.jpg | 76.92 KB |
| rcp_logo_ppp.jpg | 65.78 KB |
| rcp_logo_bj.jpg | 5.41 KB |
 | 67 weeks ago Paul Bearman updated this Competition Entry. |
| 67 weeks ago Paul Bearman updated this Competition Entry. |
| 67 weeks ago Paul Bearman submitted this idea. |
