Growth Game: How Method Recycling is bringing a sustainability mindset to growth

Imagine a bin business that’s design-first, tech-enabled, on-trend and (inexplicably) a little bit sexy. That’s Method Recycling, a Wellington-based startup led by husband-and-wife team India and Steven Korner.

Having just reached profitability, this business is growing. But with a strong focus on branding and sustainability, these founders are staying true to their values, and committing to growing sustainably, too.

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Bringing tech into the waste equation

India’s background is in graphic design and commercial leasing, while Steven’s is in product design in healthcare. 

They put their heads together to reimagine recycling in the office environment, creating functional bins that office managers would be proud to display, and that make recycling simple to the point of being automatic.

However, through working with corporate clients, they realised there was a missed opportunity here. 

Increasingly, companies want to reduce the waste they’re sending to landfill. But there hasn’t been an effective solution for measuring progress or success.

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In 2023, Method Recycling created its Insights software, using weight sensors in bins to track how much waste is going where; allowing organisations to set their goals, move towards them, and share real evidence of their progress.

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Growth fuelled by the brand

Introducing hardware and software elements to the business, plus a product-as-a-service model, has been a learning curve, Steven says. The team has been finding the right way to approach new enterprise customers with an innovative, impact-led solution.

Ultimately, they’ve leaned into their branding, the simplicity of the solution, and the outcomes customers can achieve.

“Our growth strategy has been linked to outbound sales activity,” Steven explains.

“We’ve tried to grow that skill set within the business, while also ensuring we’re growing the brand and what we stand for alongside it.”

Sales may be outbound, but when the team reaches out, it’s not a completely cold interaction. Most businesses will have interacted with the Method brand in one way or another, Steven says.

“We’re assuring our brand awareness is quite high within our segment, so therefore those interactions are a lot more effective.”

Sustainability is a huge part of Method’s brand identity.

Of course, tackling the waste crisis is ingrained into the startup’s very foundations, but it’s also a registered B-Corp — something the team also leans into both in terms of the credibility it brings and as a way to attract like-minded customers.

Equally, this is a design-first business, and that plays a role in the branding, too. The founders want the solution to be as easy to understand as possible.

“Waste is quite a complicated thing, so our brand is around trying to provide a method to the madness; really being able to simplify something and design an interaction to help our customers get good, sustainable outcomes.”

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Smart bins, smart bets

For its first seven years, Method was bootstrapped, growing only under the steam of sales and revenue. Steven and India took on equity funding to help scale up their technology offering.

“Initially, that bootstrapping approach meant that for every dollar we spent we needed to ensure it was super effective, because there were not a lot of dollars there to throw around,” Steven says.

“It means we were really disciplined in ensuring we were making good decisions, but also that we weren’t playing it safe. 

“We would take small bets, and if they paid off we would turn them into bigger bets.”

The equity funding meant they could continue with this same strategy but with bigger first bets, Steven explains.

“It allowed us to learn a lot faster.”

The team took on Tractor funding at around the same time, but for a very different purpose. 

Steven and India put debt to use to purchase inventory for their hardware product, clearly linking the cost of the capital to revenue that would be generated through selling those units. 

“We’re quite lucky that we’re cash-flow positive, so we could see that link quite directly. Therefore we were able to utilise that money in quite a smart kind of way,” Steven says.

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A sustainable approach to growth

Method Recycling is driven by a blue-sky goal to divert 1 billion kilos of waste from landfill, and with 140 million already diverted, it’s well on its way.

The team has operations in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and bins on the ground in the US and Europe. But Steven doesn’t have global domination on his mind just yet.

“We’ve got opportunities in other countries as we grow, but in these economic times we don’t want to take on too much. We’re not growth-at-all-costs, we have to make sure we’re growing in a sustainable way.”

Method’s bins are made using post-consumer recycled materials, and the team has end-of-life processes for its products, too, ensuring that bins are reused or repurposed.

As the business scales, these processes have to scale with it. For Steven, growth is tied to sustainability and customer success.

“For the growth we have in mind, we have to live up to our brand promise for every new and existing customer,” he explains.

“If we can’t get customers to achieve the sustainability goals that they want to, that’s not a good measure of success for us. That’s something we always keep front-of-mind.”