It’s difficult to think on any more win-win kind of collaboration that when a company can use as a raw material whatever waste other company has to pay to get rid of. In the US alone, manufacturers pay to dispose of 176 million tons of waste annually. About 34% of this material is reusable, and is often worth twice over what it costs to throw it out. The online trade of these recoverable materials represents an unrealized $13.200 million market opportunity.

Material Mix is a startup that allows recycling professionals to connect directly with manufacturers to get rid of their waste. The company is featuring software that commoditizes the trade of reusable materials within the current waste collection industry with built-in tools for logistics, best practices, and regulatory compliance. There is a large, under-served market seeking these reusable materials and Material Mix wants to help organizations to find innovative ways to market these materials, saving the seller waste disposal fees and offering lower costs for buyers. The company charges an eight-percent fee for making the connection.

Implementing sustainable materials management is an often overlooked way to reduce operating expenses. Material Mix value preposition is based on the simple idea of making waste inventory management easier by making waste more “visible” to those who could be interested on it. Material Mix is therefore promoting networking and collaborative industrial byproduct synergies.

Maybe Material Mix cannot be considered in a narrow sense as a collaborative platform, but nevertheless we find it inspiring as a good example of the kinds of tools still required to drive collaboration and make it much easier and likely. Many companies and organizations have assets potentially very interesting to others for a win-win collaboration, the main barrier being the “invisibility” of those assets beyond a catalog of products and services or a short and formal description “About us”  in the corporate web page .  

It’s not difficult to imagine the potential value of a tool for searching and matching those invisible assets. Meanwhile, in Co-Society, we try to accomplish this mission “face to face” among all organizations, startups or consolidated businesses we meet.  

MaterialMix