A New York City-based waste management software company has partnered with a third-party recycling verifying organization in hopes of making the industry more proactive and transparent.
CurbWaste, coming off an eight-figure funding round last fall, now provides the operational management and data platform for the Recycling Certification Institute (RCI).
RCI verifies construction and demolition recycling facilities to improve transparency in confirmed material recovery rates. The deal means CurbWaste will supply its platform to streamline RCI’s work and make more information available to stakeholders.
“I’ve been a big believer in the RCI mission and understand how having a third-party tool was valuable,” said Mike Marmo, CurbWaste CEO. “We align on overarching strategy, making sure the facilities (that RCI monitors) and RCI are aligned on what they’re trying to achieve. We’re helping make sure they’re best in class at pulling recyclables from the waste stream.”
RCI works with independent evaluators to verify facility performance and certify recovery outcomes. This information is shared with municipalities, project owners and other relevant parties.
Facilities that earn RCI certification have met standardized recovery and reporting metrics that were independently verified.
“Strengthening the infrastructure that supports credible recycling certification is our priority,” said
John Thomas, managing partner at RCI. “By aligning facility operations, certification workflows and reporting within a single system, we are improving consistency, transparency and confidence across the market.”
Marmo said the framework of a partnership began when Thomas reached out to him about a year ago. Their shared vision and CurbWaste’s capabilities made the arrangement an easy fit, he said.
CurbWaste’s platform and its roughly 60-person workforce will help RCI digitize its certification operations and make data more readily accessible, he said, including reporting tools. The platform will help standardize material tracking, automate recovery calculations, detect anomalies, evaluate workflows and enforce compliance.
“We can help facilities aggregate data and reflect it appropriately,” Marmo said. “They can then better facilitate that information long term.”
While helping RCI, CurbWaste can also use the information gathered to increase interconnectivity across the waste value chain, Marmo said. By working toward establishing a system of record, the platform can help connect the dots across varied data points and create a more natural flow of information.
“We’ve always believed waste is a fragmented industry,” he said. “This allows us, in a more proactive way, to tell how materials are handled and establish a true connection between facilities and the people consuming the data. In order to measure something, you need to be able to analyze it.
RCI’s Thomas said, “When you have fragmented data everywhere … it can be a full-time job managing all that data.The transition to CurbWaste software has started at RCI, and it will be phased in gradually.”
Marmo added, “Hopes are to have everything fully implemented by the end of this year’s third quarter.”
