LAWR

SYSTEMS & SOFTWARE New kid on the recycling block The last two decades have been characterised by a surge of online marketplaces such as eBay, Moneysupermarket, Comparethemarket.com and Rightmove. However, the re- source management industry has been slow to hop on board the digital train. Liz Gyekye meets Kae Faeff, founder of the online marketplace itsCollected.com, who is aiming to cause waves and digitalise the waste collection sector. ntrepreneur Kae Faeff has more than ten years experience in founding and running organisations. His most recent venture he co-founded was an e-commerce business specialising in fitness clothing called Zaggora, which reached sales of more than $27m in its first two years of trading. Prior to that he was involved in real estate. He only got involved in the waste sector last year but says he wants to make a change in the industry by digitalising it with his online marketplace. The 31-year-old LSE law graduate got into waste when he was asked by a friend to help restructure his waste collection company (he did not disclose the name of the company when asked). He advised him how to restructure the firm. Here, he had a light-bulb moment and said he discovered a "digital" gap in the market. Faeff has been hooked on waste ever since and founded itsCollected.com in February 2014. Officially launching soon, itsCollected will aim to do for waste collection what Expedia did for travel or Rightmove did for property. Faeff says that his firm will help collectors get more sales, waste producers get market prices and aid both sides to obtain visibility. The concept is simple – the online marketplace aims to bring together waste collectors and commercial waste producers – almost like a Gocompare. com for waste. Collectors will publish certain postcodes they prefer to collect from online and businesses will list the waste they produce online. The waste producers will be able to check prices and locations of waste collectors and the collectors will give quotes for the job. Faeff says: "Collectors will have bet- ter and more efficient rounds, more jobs and concentrate on specific areas more. Producers will have more access to the market." Faeff also maintains that the digital marketplace will not only provide trans- parency to the waste collection market but will also make it easier to transact therefore reducing costs for all involved. This is something Faeff feels is overdue in the waste industry. He says that sectors such as prop- erty, insurance, finance and travel went through a digital revolution 15-20 years ago and that the internet made it easier for buyers and sellers to meet and to agree a deal. Faeff says you now find that people tend to go to websites such as Zoopla or Rightmove to find a property or Expedia to arrange travel plans. However, he explains that waste did not go through this digital revolution and that "waste is still in the same exact position as property, travel and insur- ance were 20 years ago and the ways you currently find waste is through the old ways of doing it". For example, through "knocking on doors or going online and searching company by company". "With Gocompare you have the whole market in one place. Gocompare does the job for you. Who has time to search company by company?" Faeff is hoping to start his new venture in London, expand it to the rest of the UK and then export the invention to Europe. However, he acknowledges that he faces challenges getting the waste sector involved. He says that the industry "is quite a large market with a lot of com- petition already" and from an "outsiders point of view it is a very difficult market to penetrate". However, he says "waste is a cost just like your car insurance is a cost and there is the opportunity to make it cheaper and more efficient. If I will not do this somebody else will." All in all, Faeff says he just wants to make a positive change with his innova- tion and "it's not about the money." At 31 years old he has big ambitious but he says that he is very old to initiate a tech- nology start up. He says that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is 30 years old and controls a company worth billions of dollars. He concludes: "Any feedback is welcome. It's a new thing. You are bound to make mistakes and errors but this is part of life and I am looking forward to it. I think it's a necessary thing for the industry and I hope everyone will see the benefit of it." " I want to make a change. It's not about the money " 10 Local Authority Waste & Recycling October 2014 E Kae Faeff, founder and chief executive of itsCol- lected.com

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