As a startup, you have to continuously innovate to keep up with the times. Besides that, we are always looking for the best way to serve our users. Therefore, we are currently working on a very special pilot: #Cyclingforrecycling.
From now on, we will also brave the whimsical Dutch weather on cargo e-bikes to pick up your old items. You may soon see CEO Francisco Rivera riding by on his sturdy bike, on his way to a cleaner future.
In this article we explain how this pilot came into existence, and we substantiate our reasons for this innovation as well, which are listed below. We hope you are as happy with the news as we are!
EUDigiCirc: A European program for circular economies
This pilot was made possible by a subsidy we received from the European DigiCirc program. This program supports forward-thinking initiatives in building circular economies using the latest technologies. DigiCirc is strongly committed to digitization, with promising startups receiving subsidies to make their dreams come true. We can proudly say that Byewaste is one of these startups.
The advantages of e-bikes
We are convinced that these cargo e-bikes will help us further in our pursuit of a world without waste. You may wonder why we believe this. Therefore, we will discuss all of the advantages with you:
A reduced ecological footprint
We are most enthusiastic about the reduced ecological footprint that the e-bikes bring us. We are aware that the truck we currently drive around emits a small amount of CO2. For this reason, we always carefully calculate the fastest route between all addresses, so that we limit the number of kilometers that we have to travel to a minimum.
However, our new e-bikes are even better for the environment, because an electric bicycle emits much less than the average car – just about 3% (source: Milieucentraal). The generation of the energy that an e-bike uses is already included in this calculation.
This means that the cargo e-bikes enable us to act even more in line with our sustainable mission!
Increased agility and faster pickups
You do not get it much more Dutch than cycling. Our roads are optimized for this widely accepted mode of transport, and our drivers notice this all too well when they are on the road. They often experience difficulties when navigating narrow roads or sharp angles with the truck. Sometimes they even have to make a detour if there is a pedestrian zone in between the different stops on their route. This causes us significant delays.
We will be much more agile on the bikes, which makes it easier for us to get to your front door to pick up your items. Due to this, we will travel from door to door faster, as we can take the optimal route in between stops. In addition, the fact that we do not have to find a parking spot for the truck also leads to faster pickups. It is a win-win situation really!
The use of standard boxes
Our users are currently allowed to offer their old items in any type of boxes or bags that they already have at home. This system has worked well so far, but we asked ourselves whether there might be better ways of doing this anyways.
Since the cargo e-bikes have limited storage space, we had to think about a way to make optimal use of this space and store as much stuff as possible. After all, we don’t want to have to drive back and forth several times to pick up all items. This is how we came up with the second component of the #CyclingForRecycling pilot: the use of standard boxes. Their standard shape allows us to easily stack the collected items on the bikes.
We additionally hope that the availability of these boxes will improve the user experience. We will test whether this idea will also work well in practice in the upcoming period. To be continued!
Your feedback can help us to further improve our service! Do you have questions, comments, or a personal experience with our service that you would like to share? Send us an email at info@byewaste.app.
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