- Opening Day
- Introductions and Group Building
- Presentations:
- Terry gave a presentation about rECOlogy which turns trash into art.
- Small Group Breakouts
- Weekend project group setup
- CigBins
- Kathleen Kemp and her team participated in Launch Some Good 2013.
- Their team came up with the idea to create Cigarette Bins which smokers aren’t afraid of.
- Typical comments about Cigarette disposal units are they’re:
- Dirty, Smelly, Etc.
- Social Delta
- Jonathan Wade gave a presentation about Social Enterprise Startups.
- In particular dealt with the Business Model Canvas
- Upstream and Downstream Benefits / Challenges
- Lack of
- focus is a leading cause of problems with startups
- Be ready to put some ideas in the parking lot
- Questions to be aware of during planning:
- “I will change the world”:
- Who is “I”?
- What are you aiming to get out of the process?
- How will you achieve the “Will”?
- You need a revenue model or you can’t be sustainable.
- Who are the clients?
- Are your customers also the beneficiary?
- What is Change?
- Know what you want to do.
- What is the End Result?
- Is there a need for the change?
- How big is “the world”?
- Build up the Phrase:
- “I”
- (and the people who I work with)
- “Will”
- (through the distribution of educational materials about aquaponics)
- “Change the World”
- (by bringing food production closer to the consumer)
- “I”
- Who is “I”?
- “I will change the world”:
- Researching your Customers
- In Canada there are a lot more limitations on what you can do from a marketing perspective.
- Know your Metrics
- In standard business environments it’s easy to know what your key metrics are – Profit and Growth
- It’s harder to measure the intended effects for Social Enterprise based businesses.
- Know yourself (and your team)
- Identify gaps in your skillset so that you can find someone to fill that void.
- Look for people already in the industry to mentor or provide consultation.
- The best way to get new information is to find someone to collaborate with
- CSI: Constellation Model www.socialinnovation.ca/constellationmodel
- Identify gaps in your skillset so that you can find someone to fill that void.
- Incorporation types
- Unincorporated: You can act as an individual
- Cooperative Incorporation: Everyone who is a member of the coop has 1 vote in the running of the corporation.
- Multistakeholder Cooperatives
- 7 principles
- 1 person -> 1 vote
- Most sustainable business model – Everyone is bought into the idea.
- Very popular model in the developing world
- Coops help coops
- “We help others who think like us”
- Huge amount of knowledge available.
- They’re harder to get to move quickly.
- Small coops are an exception.
- 8-20 members are really tough to run – too many good ideas. Everyone comes with their own baggage.
- 500+ member organizations have safety and security because the people who actually get involved in the voting process start move towards being very agile individuals.
- Charity
- Collective buyin
- Community friendly
- People are less likely to shut you out
- Businesses don’t see you as a threat
- Redistributing the teams
- We’re now splitting from the presentations to meet with our teams
- Our Plan
- www.upcycle.space
- Use Claudia’s existing business and expand it to include an online presence.
- The online presence exists to facilitate duplicate existing —-….
- Mentoring Panel
- Jason, Accountant, BDC, Justin (Hidden Harvest OETN.ca), Barbara (Camptech), Environmental Auditor
- “Stuff Bins” – WeCycle
- We have our green bins, blue bins, and black bins. But these all are essentially waste.
- Lots of stuff is thrown out which isn’t broken or at it’s end of life.
- This is a bin for things that are not broken – but are no longer of use to -me-.
- Plan of action:
- Small pilot project – in centertown
- Give out some bins to the chosen area
- Warehouse for sorting and organizing
- Vacant building owned by the city
- “Giant Warehouse”
- Expert Feedback:
- Some people wouldn’t be interested in storing “yet another bin”
- You may want to consider funding from the municipality to support the operations
- How you communicate the list of items which are not allowed in the box is a challenge – contamination is an issue
- You have a major sorting issue which stops you from being able to get the stuff to the people who need it
- You should consider acting as a filter for groups such as Sally Ann or Value Village to get rid of products more quickly. Holding costs for the products are likley to be fairly high.
- upcycle.space
- We want to turn waste into art and community beautification projects
- Tires -> planter pots
- Bespoke installation art projects for commercial and not for profit organizations
- Website:
- Initially used to show and purchase what is produced
- Facilitation of localized projects based on standardized plans
- Meetups to do larger group projects
- Linking with the Ottawa Tools Library
- Classified ads for exchanging supplies for projects
- Expert Opinions:
- Looking for a building -> Plasco has just handed over a large facility to the city at the dump
- Is there a market for the art being produced?
- You should bring people on site as a way to teach about waste
- At my childrens daycare tire was has been used
- Perhaps there’s too many ideas. I would recommend starting to chop down on the feature set
- Custom designed artwork – what about companies which throw out specific types of waste?
- How do you make sure you’re not diverting waste from an already diverted stream?
- We want to turn waste into art and community beautification projects
- Reusable Food Containers
- IC&I waste is (mostly) invisible.
- Food containers are a major factor in this.
- You can provide a discount for clients who bring these containers back
- Expert Opinions:
- Cost differential of disposable packaging vs reusable packaging. What’s the payback period?
- The end-user buys the container
- Market acceptance is going to be a huge hurdle for this
- One of the risks for reusable containers is that when people try to clean them before giving them back they may cause pipes to clog
- You could run this as a Bixi bike type deal – pick up your lunchbox on the way out for lunch.
- Cost differential of disposable packaging vs reusable packaging. What’s the payback period?
- EcoDistrict composting
- Embarrasingly there is no significant commercial composting in Ottawa
- Most of the composting is handled by Tomlinson
- Other cities have proven the business model of commercial compost pickup
- The typical way that composting is handled is by leaving the waste in large piles which produce methane based aerobic waste.
- TerraCycle – produces a liquid fertilizer
- Tina (on our team) is a chemical engineer
- Sales can be done in bulk or through retailers
- Marketing the product through the pickup process – trade waste for liquid fertilizer
- Expert Opinion:
- What are the startup costs of a business like this?
- How do your collection logistics work out? The product and waste are both quite heavy
- How is the compost you’re producing better than solid waste compost?
- I like how you’re getting paid from both ends of the worm (Paid to pick up the waste then paid for the product)
- Back to Team Work