ScrapLoop: making recycling as easy as booking a cab — and paying households fairly for it

ScrapLoop's founders saw two problems at once. Households threw recyclables in the bin because selling to a scrap dealer was inconvenient and the rates felt unfair. Informal waste collectors, who did most of the city's recycling, earned little and had no steady work. Companies wanted to prove their waste was recycled responsibly and could not.

We interviewed households, office facility managers and collectors. Households wanted scheduled pickups and transparent weighing. Collectors wanted steady routes, fair pay and respect. Recyclers needed clean, sorted material. Companies needed records of where their waste went.

Households book pickups in the app. Collectors, many from the informal sector, get optimised routes, weigh materials on Bluetooth scales so households see the weight live, and payouts go instantly by UPI. Materials are tracked by batch from pickup through the warehouse to the recycler.

Households see their impact over time; companies get reports showing what was collected and where it was recycled.

A small team designing for both smartphone-savvy households and first-time smartphone users among collectors.

Agreed with the founders and collector representatives.

Everything that shipped for households, collectors, warehouses and companies.

ScrapLoop launched in a group of residential societies and offices, with collectors trained in small groups. Transparent weighing and instant payouts built trust with households quickly.

Transparency changes behaviour. Seeing the weight and rate made households trust the process.

Design for the workers. A simple collector app with fair pay made the whole system work.