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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee Cups. Saxon Wright on how Borrow by Huskee is keeping cups out of landfill. Episode 5.
What if we could eliminate the 1.8 billion disposable coffee cups Australians send to landfill every year? That's exactly what Saxon Wright is working towards with Borrow by Huskee, a revolutionary reusable cup system that's making sustainability not just possible, but convenient.
The journey begins with Wright's origins as founder of Pablo & Rusty's coffee company, where sourcing trips to coffee farms revealed mountains of discarded coffee husk waste. This sparked the creation of the original Huskee Cup, incorporating this agricultural byproduct into reusable cups that found global success. But Saxon realised individual reusable cups, while helpful, weren't creating the systemic change needed to truly solve the disposable cup crisis.
Enter Borrow by Huskee – a comprehensive system where customers use an app to scan and borrow cups, returning them to any participating venue or smart bin within 14 days. The cups are collected, professionally washed, and redistributed to cafes in a seamless circular economy. Each cup is tracked through individualised QR codes, ensuring accountability and allowing each cup to be used hundreds of times before replacement.
The system is seeing remarkable success at Sydney's Barangaroo precinct, approaching 20% adoption through collaboration between building owners, waste operators, and precinct managers. What's fascinating is that many customers choose the system not primarily for environmental reasons, but simply because they prefer the superior drinking experience the cups provide – proving sustainability works best when it's also the more attractive option.
Wright's vision extends far beyond coffee cups to food containers, cold cups, wine glasses and eventually all forms of packaging. He envisions entire cities becoming single-use free through interconnected systems of smart bins, cleaning facilities, and household reuse bins alongside traditional recycling.
Ready to be part of the solution? Download the Borrow by Huskee app today to find participating venues near you and experience firsthand how convenience and sustainability can work together to create meaningful change.
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I'm gonna change this world today. Make those bad things go away.
Ben:Hey, testing, yeah Good, let's talk.
Ben:It's been said that convenience is the enemy of sustainability and if ever that was on display in a big way, disposable coffee cups have to be right up there. While plenty of reusable cups exist, and some of us even go to the effort of using them, for most people the ubiquitous disposable cup is just too easy you grab it, drink it and throw it away, only for it to go into landfill, where it stays pretty much forever. In fact, it's so easy that in Australia, we go through a whopping 1.8 billion cups a year, while worldwide that figure is as high as 500 billion. Yes, every single year.
Ben:On one hand, you could say that the size of the problem makes it one of the hardest to solve. On the other, you could say that if we can crack this, we can crack anything, especially when it comes to that curly question of asking people to change their everyday behaviour. Fortunately, Saxon Wright has a good idea to help solve it. He's the co-founder of reusable coffee cup system, Borrow by Huskee , and he's with us here today to tell us all about it. Welcome, Saxon
Saxon:Ben. Hey, mate, good to be here.
Ben:So your story doesn't start with coffee cup reuse. It starts with you founding coffee company Pablo Rusty's, then inventing the Huskee's reusable coffee cup. Can you take us on a brief history of how you went from roasting coffee beans to solving the problem of coffee cups?
Saxon:Look, I founded Pablo and Rusty's probably around 20 years ago and, look, sustainability and doing something positive was always part of what we were hoping to achieve. And it kind of evolved as we started sourcing our own green coffee. So we started traveling to different places all over the world. In particular went to Yunnan in southern China. So it's a region that's actually really beautiful. There's a lot of rainforest, there's a lot of natural landscapes. That's really amazing. It's not what you think of typically when you think of China, but down there there was coffee and the farming areas and we started looking to source coffees from that region and in doing so, we found a lot of waste associated with the growing of coffee.
Saxon:So, for people that don't know, coffee is actually a seed inside a small red cherry piece of fruit. Around that you have some fruit that you've got to get rid of, and then there's a husk layer that sits around the bean, and husk was a byproduct. So when you process coffee, you have mountains of husk that gets stored and typically just gets discarded. It often just gets thrown out to rot. They might make compost out of it or they might do a few things with it. They might make a char product with it, but ultimately it's just a byproduct that has to be dealt with.
Saxon:And in the whole process of how we were looking at the farms and what we could do down there, we really wanted to see if there was something we could do with the different waste products, and Husk being one. And Huskee was really formed because we wanted to do something with that waste and the cup was the first product that we came up with, and Huskee, which is Husk plus coffee, is the genesis of what became the Huskee cup. That was based out of using the Husk material.
Ben:Great. So you've started off producing coffee. You've gone over and found where the hot coffee comes from and you've seen the waste and you've gone wow, I can make cups that go with this coffee. And how did that cup go?
Saxon:Look, it's been great. I mean, it's an amazing success. We actually launched on Kickstarter and we went to market and we weren't really sure, if I'm honest. We just thought, look, this is a great by-product. If we can make a great cup with it, that would be good.
Saxon:And the goal was always the waste at farm. I mean, we were just trying to scale a product that would consume as much of that waste as possible. So really, the focus was on the source material. We really wanted a well-designed and eco-friendly cup at the front end and it's really like a BYO, so bring your own type cup. You go into a cafe, you take this and then they fill it and you leave again, and so that's how it kind of came about, and over time it just got better and better known and we started selling globally. I think we're 90 or 100 countries around the world. Now we supply everywhere and it's been a great success. It's been an amazing cup. It's astounding the kind of response we've got from it. We're in corporate towers all over the world, we're in homes, we're in businesses, cafes, everywhere Still amazed at the places people tell me they see the cups turn out. Obviously, we supply through a lot of distributors. So often I don't know the end location of a lot of our cups, but they keep turning up, which is great.
Ben:and that of course is a story, but it's not the one we're here for today, because you're the sort of person who doesn't stop. You could have stopped. Well, as you say, you've sought to solve the waste on the farm. In doing so, you've solved, actually, a lot of coffee cup waste through all these being out there in the wild. But then you've gone a step further. You've created a brand new system called Borrow by Huskee. Could you tell me about that?
Saxon:Yeah, Borrow by Huskee was really a response to going okay. Well, I think the original Huskee cup was having an impact, and that's good, and we were seeing some change at a cafe level. You know, you might see five or 10% of a cafe's takeaway trade being used with BYO type cups not just ours, any of those that are out there, you know a double wall steel cup or a number of different options, and that's good. What we wanted to do, though, is go. What would it look like if we actually change our focus and we use the term zero base not our term, but something? That is where you start from ground zero and said if we're really trying to solve this problem from scratch, what would that look like? And so, rather than thinking of waste at a farm, it's like what would we do differently if we pursue single use in and of itself at a cafe level? And what we found is our cup, whilst it's good, isn't actually perfect, and it's not going to be the only solution, and it's not going to be the one that could have a really transformative effect at a cafe level, so we stopped to go. Okay, how do you think about the problem from scratch? What would we do differently if that's the only thing we were trying to do and I think we were victims of, I guess, our own ambition with the original cup, like trying to do too many things. We're trying to solve takeaway, we're trying to solve waste husk, we're trying to create a system that evolved and had its own swap exchange system, and they're all good things, but ultimately I think we were trying to do too much, and so by starting again, you can really zoom in and focus on the one core problem that we wanted to solve. And we still keep doing Huskee Cup. So that's fine.
Saxon:However, the is going let's look at solving reuse at not just a cafe, but what about at a corporate tower? What about at a stadium? What about across an entire city? How could we take an entire city single use free? What would that look like? And the reality is, what we've done to that point just wasn't going to do that. So we have to think about what's the cup, but then not just the cup. It has to be something bigger than a cup, it has to be a whole program, it has to be a system, there has to be potentially tech, there has to be all of these other things, and so we really stopped to go. How do we think about an entire city transformation to moving away from single use and creating an entire circular economy for packaging?
Ben:Some people would call this systems change.
Saxon:Well, it's definitely a big system and we've gone all in and we probably bit off more than we could chew it initially. But really, once you start to see the pieces come together, you can start to see how it all works together. But it is. It's a really deep system and our job is how do you make that simple for people and how do you make it simple for all the various users that are involved in not just packaging but waste and the whole ecosystem of products as it moves around in a corporate and city environments? And to do that, we realized that actually the solutions just don't exist and we have to build every single piece of that to make it all come together seamlessly.
Ben:So tell me how it works from my point of view as a coffee drinker. I roll up the cafe and I order a coffee. What happens next?
Saxon:Sure. For a consumer, it's really about just getting the cup and whatever you choose to order. Let's just say you're having a coffee, you order your coffee. At the moment we use an app. You have to download the app. You scan the cup, it geolocates you so it knows where you are, and then it links to your phone, which has saved credit card details. The reason we do that we need you to know that this cup has value and that you need to return it. So then you have 14 days to return the cup back to either a bin or to the venue, and that way you won't get charged. So it's free for two weeks and it's pretty straightforward. So it's a deposit basically. Well, technically it's not a deposit because we actually don't take that money from you. We only take it if you don't return it.
Ben:Gotcha. So, basically, I order my coffee. I choose to have the cup. I say that I scan the cup, so I accept that I am taking this cup from this cafe. I then enjoy my coffee. I can look on the app when I finish my coffee. I now have my used cup and I'm maybe a hundred meters or a kilometer away from where I purchased it, and then I can go to the app to see where the closest drop-off point is. Is that right, yeah?
Saxon:Yeah, that's right. So you can either go back to any venue that's participating and drop it back there, check the cup back in, or, if you're in the Sydney CBD or surrounds where we have our smart bins, you can drop it back to one of our bins. Now, our bins aren't everywhere, so you can't drop it back to anywhere yet. Hopefully they are Not yet, but that's the goal. The goal is we get our bins all over the place. I mean, that's where we'd love to be. To make the whole reuse system come together is where the bins are a really key part of that, and maybe we can touch on that in a minute. But really it's as simple as yeah, take it back, and then the hole is released, you don't get charged and those cups will just get washed by either the venue or by us.
Ben:Great, so well, take me through that process. So the bins, what? About? A meter and a half tall, and they're almost a customized garbage bin really, except that, you know, in goes your cup and then they obviously get stacked in there. What happens next?
Saxon:Yeah, so the bins we actually designed from scratch ourselves. So what we realized is that the drop-off piece of the puzzle is really critical. You just need to be able to drop your cup back easily. So we realized early on we didn't want to have to do a bin, but there was no other bins on the market, so we ended up designing our own bin. And it's not just a bin, it's a smart bin in the sense that it has a little scanner on it on the front and each cup has its own individualized QR code linked to that cup. It scans it at the bin and then a little light flashes green, the gate opens and you throw your cup in, and then we know that you have put this cup in this bin at this time.
Ben:Great. So it's a check-in system, basically yeah. And then what happens to it? It's now in the check-in bin. What happens now?
Saxon:Yep, so they then get collected by us, so we actually have an.
Ben:And then so you've got a wash facility. You wash all the cups, yep.
Saxon:So we have our own wash hub which has a high volume washing capability. Can I bring my dishes? No, so you bring it. All the cups come back in bulk, we push them through the dishwasher and then they get stacked in reusable boxes. So the tubs are even reusable, and then a cafe would just order them like they do single use. So we've tried to create it as streamlined as possible so that it replicates the single use system. So both for the consumer, for the cafe, for everyone involved, it feels like a familiar process. It's the same way that you normally do things and then they would just get cycled back through the system and each cup can go through hundreds of times and just go. The loop continues and we know where those cups are, we know how many uses they've had and we manage that, and for every use that's a single use that's no longer going to landfill.
Ben:It is quite a tech enabled system in that you actually tracking this, which is a wonderful thing. Can you give me some of the stats you know on a cup? How far does somebody normally go with a cup? Do we know that? How many times will a cup go through Therefore
Saxon:Yeah, so we'd like to see each cup probably get up to a thousand uses would be ideal. If we get to a hundred, that's good. The cups should last, no problem. That's not really the issue. It's probably a bigger issue that if they get lost or someone decides to keep it or something which they can, they just pay through it if they get lost or someone decides to keep it or something which they can, they just pay through it.
Saxon:You just pay your $3 and that's it so, which is fine. But ultimately we want to keep cups in the system, but ironically, people don't actually travel that far. So what we've found is that most people just use it in the corporate tower or somewhere nearby and it ends up pretty close to a bin nearby. People don't go that far, or if they do, they come back to drop it off, so that's not really a big deal. But the key thing that we need to impress on people is that each cup is an asset and that's how we think of it. Each asset has value and ultimately, that value needs to be maintained, and the success of this system is really ensuring that the asset value stays as high as possible.
Saxon:We want to keep as many cups in the system for as long as possible, and for every extra use we get out of each cup amplifies the positive impact of moving away from a single-use cup. So for every time we do that, we're saving water, we're saving trees, we're saving pulp, we're saving all the transport and logistics costs of sending containers all over the world that are required. So you think of how many containers are being sent to Australia every year. Every day, just unloading single-use product ends up in landfill. The numbers are staggering. So every single use we can move away from that process, from a linear system into a circular system, just benefits on so many different environmental fronts. So it's not just about the actual cup.
Ben:It's about the whole system that brings a single-use cup for you. To use it for what? 10 minutes and throw it in the bin. This thing's whole life, its used life is 10 minutes long, yet it comes all the way from, as you say, china, and then it goes into a landfill where it gets wrapped up and stays for pretty much infinity. It never breaks down?
Saxon:Yeah, I mean, obviously there's better and worse single-use products, for sure. However, ultimately it's all pulp, and all pulp is still coming from trees. It's still coming. You know, even if it's recycled, it's still having a huge energy and water usage requirement. I mean, there's just an environmental cost at every level with single-use, like there's no way around it. Compostables are definitely better than a standard cup with a plastic lining. However, they still have an impact. So we still need to move forward and every step forward is going to have a better impact. And so a system like this and yeah, we're using PP cups, so they are a plastic cup. What's PP? Sorry, it's polypropylene, so it's just a type of plastic. Yeah, where's that plastic coming from? So we make our cups in China, but we use a high-grade PP. It's well-managed, it's a good product. However, it's still plastic and we acknowledge that. However, if we can get 1,000 uses out of that, by weight, the sheer value of that far outweighs a single use by 10, 20, 30 times in its life cycle.
Ben:Are they recyclable ?
Saxon:They are
Ben:Great. So you just turn those cups back into new cups.
Saxon:No, for a few health reasons, we don't. We could, but they can just go into a standard recycling stream, so there's no issue with that. However, we know we would like to keep them in use just as long as we can, and not to mention the health impacts too, because a lot of lining in single-use cups is leaching up to 20,000 microplastics.
Ben:So one of your success stories is in Lendlease's Barangaroo, which is in Darling Harbour in Sydney. Can you tell me about what motivated them to put it in, but also the sorts of numbers you're getting out of there? How well is it going? How are people responding to it? How many times are they using the cups?
Saxon:Yeah, Barangaroo has been a great project and it's been really good because, I mean, we've been talking to them for quite a while and the key for this whole precinct was all the stakeholders getting together the building tower owners, the JLL, who's the waste operator they do like the shared services and then you have Lendlease as the manager of the precinct, and they all had appetite to move towards reuse, which was great. So, coming together, we were able to design a system that worked for them and we've now put the bins our smart bins all around the precinct, all the different venues throughout the precinct, now on board with Borobahusky. So it means that it's a really unified response to the whole project and so it's been great and we've now got hundreds of people every day going through. The goal is to get that to thousands and longer term, we'd actually love to see the entire precinct single use free. So that's the goal.
Saxon:We're not there yet we're getting there. We're getting up to 20% adoption rate, which just means 20% of the takeaway. Daily coffees are now using the program. Not quite, we're not quite there, but we're pretty close to that. We're heading towards that. So as we get more people involved, then those numbers go up and it's great because as people start seeing it more, it becomes more visible. Branger have been really great because they put decals on all the windows and all the turn doors, everywhere signage. We ran a program using a wheel to win, so you spin the wheel, win a coffee or other different incentives to get people on board. So we did a big activation to get people interested, which is great, but it's been good. We're now getting more people every day joining the system and part of it.
Ben:So getting all those stakeholders, as they call it, aligned is clearly fundamental to success there. Do you think that it's well attuned to that precinct level where you've almost got a closed area? You've got Brangere, you've got three towers and they've got a food court at the bottom. They're almost. I know there's openness and that people can walk in and out. But fundamentally a lot of people work there every day. They go up, they go down. Do you think that's the best place for early adoption, places like that university ?
Saxon:Oh yeah, I mean precinct's definitely the easiest place to start and you're right, you need to get everyone involved and interested in being part of it to get it going, to get momentum.
Saxon:Having said that, there's a lot of visitors and foot traffic from CBD, from everywhere that comes through Barangaroo, so they do get a lot of people coming in and out, and one of the key advantages of our system is that it does interact in both an open and a closed environment.
Saxon:So in a closed environment, such as a building, an internal lobby, then fine. However, if people leave, which they often do, there's no reason why they can't take their cup with them and drop it in one of our smart bins, and our system picks that up and we can calibrate with the cafe or the lobby or whoever to close the loop, so we know where the assets are, where they've come from, et cetera. So it doesn't actually impact us at all, but you're right, other areas that we'd love to spend more time on is university campuses or other venues where you have a lot of repeat foot traffic. A difficult scenario is where you have a lot of visitors and first timers, because you've got to teach people. They need to understand the system, they might need to download the app, and that's a bit problematic if every customer has to do that every single time, whereas an environment where you have a lot of repeat traffic is going to be a simpler way to get scale for sure.
Ben:How have the cafes taken it? Have they looked at this as? Look, our disposable coffee cup system just works, and this is a new thing I have to worry about. I'm a small business owner. Have they embraced it? On the whole, it's a mix actually.
Saxon:So some cafes are really pro and they love it and they want to have a really positive footprint and so they jump on board. They're great at promoting it and they really drive it with their customers and get everyone on. And then you have the other end of the spectrum. I'm too busy, it's too hard. It's another program that I have to learn. My staff don't want to know about it. So we have both ends of the spectrum. A lot just sit in the middle and are happy to participate, happy to get it on, see how it goes, and that's fine.
Saxon:We work with them and we really give them the resources or the marketing or whatever they might need to get them on board. But we are definitely seeing a better impact when a cafe owner, an operator, a manager gets behind the program, gets their staff on board, helps them understand it, helps them see why it's good. And they're often because they're dealing with the customers at the face. They are really influential and so they can really make a difference between you know whether 50% of their customers want to get on board or none. Because they talk about it, they engage and we talk about it as being kind of cost parity for them. So there is a cost for a cafe, but it's charged on a per cup basis and it's pretty much equivalent to a single use cup, so the cost really shouldn't make an impact. It's more about yeah, there's a bit of effort, yeah, they have to talk to customers it's something new but once they do, then it's pretty straightforward.
Ben:Do you find the best technique is to not worry about the ones that are not interested and really just focus on the ones that are, in the hope that over time the others will see it working and adopt it? Or do you find the better option is to go great, but I'll help you guys who are into it? But I'll help you guys who are into it, but I'll also spend a lot of time trying to bring those others along, because that way I'll get the whole precinct on board.
Saxon:Yeah, it's a bit of a network effect that we need to try and create. So we need enough venues on board. We want consumers to be able to go. Oh yeah, everyone here is doing it. So, whether you're active or not, we still want you on to be part of the program. So the more places we have, even if you're a little less engaged, is going to be better for the program on the whole. So we still try and get everyone on.
Saxon:However, we don't want to spend a disproportionate amount of time with a cafe that's not really going to be pushing and driving it. So, yeah, we'll give a lot more attention and love to a cafe that's really on board and really engaged and they become our champions. And then often what we see is, oh, they're getting momentum, they're actually attracting consumers that really care, and suddenly other cafes are going hang on, I'm losing customers because we're not participating or we're not engaging with this as much. So it is great when we see cafes come on board, and we've actually even seen that between the different cafes in Barangaroo. Even some cafes are a bit more engaged and promoting and doing a better job as a result.
Ben:That's very good news, because it comes to the role of the consumer in this. Often, consumers say they will preference sustainable products, but when push comes to shove they don't always do so. So are you finding that? Or what you're saying is you're finding consumers are actually starting to preference the cafes that are running this system?
Saxon:That's what it looks like it feels like there's definitely momentum towards people wanting to participate in something like this. Having said that, it's interesting. You know, like we often think that you know, sustainability is going to drive things forward and so on, but what we found, like with the original Husky Cup, a lot of people bought our cup just because they love the design, they love the look of it, not because of any of the eco credentials that might be there. It's like that's all nice to have. Some of them didn't even know until later and they're like oh, this is good, it's got husk in it. What? Whereas the new cups that we've got, the borrow husky cups, which are just PP, they don't have husk in them, just for what it's worth.
Saxon:However, people are actually going. Actually, this is a really nice cup to drink from. This is actually a better experience than a single use cup. So we are getting preferential treatment that just would prefer to use that because it's a nicer cup to drink your coffee out of. It's a better designed cup than a single use, which it can be, obviously, because it's a more significant cup. So we are getting people adopt it just for reasons that aren't. Oh, because I'm trying to avoid single use. It's actually just a better experience and it's really easy and it's actually kind of nice dropping it in a smart bin, and our smart bins are actually more convenient than some of the waste bins, so even that's another reason for people to be part of it.
Ben:So convenience plays a strong role, but also experience, the consumer experience you create. Do you find that once they do know about the sustainability or environmental credentials, that that gives them a little aha moment and maybe they tell their friends, or do you think that really, for a lot of people they just don't care?
Saxon:Look, the reality is a lot of people. They just don't care. So we need to create a system that's a better experience, that's more convenient, that's just as cost effective, that's just as quick and simple. So we really are fighting against that convenience and we need to have an elevated experience, an elevated process to give people just a better outcome ultimately, and that's a driver for us. We want to deliver that. Oh and, by the way, yeah, the credentials of sustainability are there. Oh, yeah, it's doing something great for the environment and it does make people feel good and they're happy about that, but it really doesn't have as big an impact as you would hope or you know like to think, but I do agree. I think it's a nice secondary thing. I think it's something that keeps people doing it. So it might not be the driver to get them on board, but it's something that people start to think about, and when they start to think about their health or the environment or other things, then, yeah, you create a certain momentum. That I think is good.
Ben:Do you think the gamification helps? The fact they can see how many coffees they've had and how many cups have gone through, and maybe they can even one day track where they walked with their coffee Does that sort of stuff help?
Saxon:Yeah, and we want to do a lot more of that, right? So we're only just starting doing some of that gamification and we do have points. We've got loyalty and we've got a bunch of different things that we're doing that make it a bit more fun. We've actually just started, in some of the towers we've just done a leaderboard to show which tower is beating which tower.
Saxon:So tower one's, you know, making just a little bit of fun. But anything that we can do to make the process engaging is definitely helpful. And then over time, yeah, what we want to do is have like a lottery, so every hundredth cup that goes into this bin might win something. Or you know, this bin is sponsored by a company X and if someone puts their coffee into this bin, you know they might win a prize or something from the sponsor. So we're trying to do different things to make it a bit more fun, and that'll evolve over time as we keep moving forward. But, yeah, all those little things start to add up.
Ben:We've seen something a little bit successful like that in the return and end scheme obviously, where you can choose to have your 10 cents for putting it in or you can give it to charity, and actually the numbers say that by far and away most people choose to give it to charity. Funny enough.
Saxon:Yeah, I mean it's interesting, I guess, with that dollar value maybe being so low or you know who knows but and we're exploring some of those ideas. Certainly at events and other areas where it's a bit hard to use the app or to drop things off, we can just say, yep, you know, you put it in and that revenue will just go towards charity, but $3 starts to add up if you're, you know, doing that a lot.
Ben:so it does, you wouldn't be handing over the whole three dollars each time. I imagine that makes for the ten dollar. Coffee would be around pretty shortly. Yeah, that's right. They seem to have gone up to six lately, I do know. So we've talked about, like, the fun part. I've always talked about the good drinking experience and possibly the fun part of the gamification, but there's a very solid health reason for people to choose a cup that's not a disposable cup too, isn't there?
Saxon:Well, single-use plastics, or the lining in a single-use cup, is a very thin plastic film and coffee being acidic, plus being hot, you know, up to 100 degrees, can degrade that lining really easily. So yeah, if you are consuming a beverage, you're typically consuming anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 microplastics. Every coffee, Every single coffee. I mean they're small, but they're there.
Ben:Small adds up big right.
Saxon:And not all plastic linings are the same, so not all cups are the same type and quality. However, they're pretty much all doing it to some levels, and so it's a genuine health risk. And so, yeah, whilst our cups are still plastic, that PPE polypropylene is still a far more stable and resilient plastic that is not going to leach anywhere near the effect of a very thin plastic lining in a single-use cup.
Ben:It's somewhat of a scare message, but it's not one I've seen out there. I mean, have you tried that message in terms of trying to get people to move away from single-use cups, or do you just think, look, we're better off just making our experience better and that's an underlying secondary reason for people to change.
Saxon:People still smoke, people still drink. I mean, look, people still choose convenience or preference. You know whether there's Over their long-term health, over their long-term. Well, it's true, right, I mean, and we've told people to stop using single use for that reason sometimes, and it doesn't really change their behavior.
Saxon:So, and as a general rule, we don't try and do negative marketing. I mean, we don't want to tell people you know they're evil, they're throwing cups in the you know filling landfill and it's you know they're having a negative consequence, but ultimately it doesn't seem to have a huge impact. So, you know, even from a health perspective, that's probably not a leading message. Having said that, I think it's good for people to be aware because it is a health risk and there is long-term damage and people should know that actually there are better alternatives and they should really think about it. It's really hard for us. I don't want to just wave a banner that's really negative and telling a story that's you know it's a bit problematic, so I try and steer away from that a little bit. However, you know we want people to be aware.
Ben:So I want you to take me back to the start somewhat. So we've had a good chat about why this is a good system and how you get people to adopt it. But, like what I'm always amazed with ideas like this is, you've some point in your life, you've a couple of years ago, you've gone. This would be a good idea. I really, really want to make this happen. What's the first thing you do?
Saxon:Yeah, I don't think it happens like in one go, though. I think ideas build on each other and you don't build. I don't think ideas come about in a vacuum. You know, ideas are built in the real world and typically as a response to problems or as a response to what you see around you. And I think you know even this program was built on the fact that we tried other systems before that. It wasn't from scratch.
Saxon:We'd worked in designing cups, we'd worked in materiality, we'd worked in thinking about the very problem of reuse at a cafe level, and I've owned over 10 cafes in my life, so I'm pretty familiar with the flow of a cafe and the problems with that and the problems with lots of people bringing their BYO cups in as well. So it's almost like each idea layers on top of the other one and you continue just to kind of let them evolve and tweak them and then start. Sometimes you have to go back again, and two steps forward, one step back and you keep going. And so I feel like what we've done is really just each time, kept moving forward and kept looking at each piece of the puzzle until it sort of starts to make sense as a whole. And then there's a point at which you have to stand right back and pull it all together. You know, we resisted making bins for ages. I was like, just I really don't want to have to make bins. But then it just became more and more apparent that the return process is only going to happen well, if we take control and facilitate a great return experience. And that just didn't exist.
Saxon:So what does that look like? How do we do that? What does that mean? So building and designing and then manufacturing a bin and doing all the smarts for that is, you know, just an evolution. So I guess we always understood where it could go and we had the right direction, that they would all add up and become a unified experience. But it didn't all happen at once. I mean, it was definitely an evolution of thought and ideas and, if I'm honest, we're still doing it. I mean we're still. We're looking at how do you transition from QR codes to RFID, which are just different scanning and identification technologies and they all have pros and cons and what does it all mean? But it's just an evolution and as we get response to what we're doing now, we need to learn and then reiterate and put that back into what we're doing. How do we evolve the design of our products? What new assets do we do? What new opportunities are there? I mean it's constantly evolving, so it really is one idea building on another and learning as we go.
Ben:What have you found to be the hardest parts of the process to work out so far?
Saxon:Look, I think for reuse it's about scale, and so to get scale, we need policy, we need government, we need councils, we need corporates, we need vendors and retailers and we need consumers. So the hardest part is bringing all of that together. How do you get everyone unified on a single solution when you have so many people with so many ideas about how to solve the world's problems? And we're sitting here going well, we have our version of events, we have our worldview and we have a lot of experience in this space. But a lot of people, especially councils or government in general, they're trying to deal with their own issues and manage waste at scale and manage recycling and all these other things, and so you know, where does reuse fit into that?
Saxon:And it's really difficult trying to get that unified outcome. You know we need policy change at a government level, we need funding to continue to scale it, we need operators to see the value in it and we need consumers to participate. So to get all of those things happening is really tricky and for us we're still a small business and we still consumers to participate. So to get all of those things happening is really tricky and for us we're still a small business and we still need to apply our resource and choose to go. Where do we invest our time and effort and energy and where do we get the biggest change in the shortest possible time with the resources we've got? So bringing all that together is not easy.
Ben:Interesting. I would have sworn you'd said, oh, it was getting the technology to work or something. But, funny enough, you've talked about the human part of it, the adoption part of it, as being the hardest thing. If there was one thing, if you had a magic wand and there was one thing you could change out there in the world that would make this work better, what would it be?
Saxon:Gosh, if only it was only one thing.
Ben:Okay, I'll give you three wishes. Let's go to a genie lamp instead of a magic wand.
Saxon:Single use magic wand. A single-use magic wand? Yeah Well, it's the stakeholders. We need lots of cafes, we need lots of venues on first, because no consumer can borrow if there's no venues that have got it. So if you're looking at a multi-sided marketplace, then really it's enough venues. So we need the venues. We need lots of venues to adopt it and just to have it. Even if they're not doing huge volumes, they need to have it so that consumers learn that it's available pretty much anywhere and everywhere you go. And if it is available, well then you can start marketing broadly, you can push it and you can make a big song and dance about it and get people going. But there's no point doing that if you've only got a small number of venues. So really we just need the venues to get on board.
Ben:Again why it works nicely at that precinct level because you can, I guess, again back to Barangaroo. You've got three towers. You can market it within that precinct because it's there in all the cafes, exactly. And now the question is how do you make that happen on a city level and a country level and a world level? Yeah, exactly.
Saxon:And that's why getting them all on did make that possible. And then they had the appetite to give it a nudge and push it and do the marketing for it.
Ben:So interesting there because you talked about policy a lot before. Government's not really involved in Barangaroo, but you could argue, lend-lease obviously operates Barangaroo. They're the ones that fundamentally have come up with the policy that we want less single use waste to happen. So they're, in a funny way, setting that overarching umbrella of the direction they want things to go, would you say. That's the truth.
Saxon:Absolutely. So the policy piece becomes really critical. And they've effectively done that at a micro level. And so, yeah, from here we want to see councils make changes and they've got a certain level of impact they can have, but then at a state, you know, epa, government level, and then obviously at a national level as well. I mean we need to see unified national policy.
Saxon:At the moment the states have varied in terms of what they are doing at a single use level. So, for example, wa, south Australia, you know, moving towards compostable packaging. That's really good. The reason that's good is because it's putting the price up of single use, which gives us an easier cost parity position. So even that's a step forward for reuse, because if you enable the cheapest possible single use, well that's our competitor. Really, the economics don't stack up at that point it's just really hard to convince someone to pay 30, 40% more for reuse. However, if they're paying for a compostable packaging, well then it's either cost parity or it might even be less. So it's a much easier equation when you negate the economic factor.
Ben:Makes sense. So obviously you've applied this system to coffee cups, but coffee cups are not the only single-use thing that comes out of like a cafe or a restaurant and a lunch zone. You've obviously got the cutlery, you've got the takeaway containers for your food and then, of course, it's not just coffee cups. There's like smoothie cups seem to be the new thing that I see everywhere, especially for teenagers. Have you looked at ways that you can expand this system to all these sorts of takeaway single-use things?
Saxon:Yeah, it's all the same thing ultimately. I mean, we're doing food containers now, so we've got a whole range of different food containers. We're expanding our cold cup range, so we'll do smoothies. We've got wine cups, we've got schooner cups. All those different assets are going to be part of the system and our bin will adopt all of them, so there's enough space in the opening, et cetera. We've pre-thought about that because we think that's really critical.
Saxon:But then you could take that even further. I mean, there's this supermarket packaging. You think about all the different packaging that goes through a supermarket. Longer term, we're not there now, but we would love to participate with supermarkets and be like well, how can we get the supplies of products that are going into all of supermarkets in reusable containers? What's the ecosystem that we could create where we have smart bins collecting reusables from all walks of life, whether it's take-home delivery food, to what's on the shelves in supermarkets, to the entire food courts range of packaging can all go through.
Saxon:There's no reason why all can't be reused. And longer term, I'd love to see potentially even every household bin has a reuse bin. Why does it need to be recycling? Why not have it a reuse? We could wash and clean. All of that. We just need the infrastructure, we just need the volume to make it worthwhile If we could set up a massive cleaning hub, many of them potentially across the city, that collects the reuse and scans it all and puts it all through. The technology's there, the assets are there, it's not hard to make. We just need a scale, and so we need corporates and we need government to get involved to get the scale.
Ben:And the willpower. Sounds like Uber Eats might be a good partner for that.
Saxon:Look, any of those delivery services are ripe for it. Interestingly though, you do have a trick of getting all of those cups back, all the food containers back, because you've got to get them from a home. So someone either has to you have to collect it from the home, or you have to get them to drop it off somewhere. So there's an extra action that's required, and then you have to deliver back to the venues. But it's all possible. There's no reason you couldn't do it. A bit of willpower, just need willpower.
Ben:You're full of good ideas. Clearly, when do you come up with them?
Saxon:Well, to be fair, they're not all mine. I mean, we talk openly. Everyone has good ideas, and my job is probably more just to bring them all together and make sense of them and see if we can decide which ones we're going to go. Not all good ideas should be executed. Put it that way Possibly not a good idea for it to be executed. You know, there's actually too many ideas. There's not enough action and not enough resource to make them happen. So our goal really is just to take the best ideas and put them into action.
Ben:What are some ideas you haven't gone forward with?
Saxon:Well, trying to limit how much we do in time, like we would love to have more scale. We would love different dishwashing facilities all around the place. We've thought about outsourcing that to different people. It's a good idea, but then you go. Well, plastics don't dry as well, so you need really good drying facilities. So what we realized is actually you need a facility that can dry really well. That's something we've installed here. So, yeah, it's a good idea to have someone else do the washing, but there's always something that's not quite right and doesn't work well. So you've got to balance the idea with does it execute really well? And again, I didn't want to have to set up a washing facility, but it was the only way we could make the system work and ensure that the cups could be hygienic and stacked and the whole system worked. So sometimes you just have to do things that you don't really want to do, but it's part of the whole, part of the big picture.
Ben:Yeah, do you? So your team oh, you said it's not all yours, and obviously it's not all yours to come up with the ideas, nor, probably, to execute them. You've got a whole team around you. How big is your team? We're about 30. 30. And do you find this constantly exploring new ideas drives them slightly mad, or do you find that they get energy from that?
Saxon:I'm pretty sure I drive everyone a little bit nuts, but yeah, I think it's hard. Our team definitely have learned to adapt quickly and to change quickly, and when we're hiring people, we often say to them if you want a stable job where you know what's going to happen every single day, this is not the place for you. You need to be aware that we change constantly. We're always trying new things. Everything's up for grabs. We are really moving at pace and trying new things, building new things.
Saxon:The team that would what they were doing six months or a year ago is probably a long way from what they're doing today, and so that constant change can be hard and be really tiring, and so we're really aware of that and we make anyone that's going to join the team aware that we are going to be evolving and that their role is going to be evolving and what they're going to be asked to do could vary massively. And I might employ you for this job, but in six months you're probably doing something very different. But the people that are here love that and they actually love the challenge of it. So it's kind of it does drive everyone a little mad, but at the same time, I think everyone's a little inspired and a little excited by the potential of changing the world and doing something positive, and I know every single person that's part of this business absolutely appreciates the fact that we're trying to do something that's really unique and really hard and really new, and to execute on that is actually a real opportunity.
Ben:So set the culture of being on a mission and then set the expectation of a lot of change, and then the right people will come with you on that.
Saxon:Absolutely, and hard work I mean we just have to keep digging in. You know like it's a constant battle to try and get people to understand and to learn what we're doing, why we're doing it. But there's also a lot of wins and the outcome is absolutely worth it.
Ben:How do you keep that energy going, to keep a culture like that going? Is it about celebrating each win each time, like, how do you make sure people are constantly feeling re-energized by the positives rather than exhausted by the change?
Saxon:That's an interesting one, because I do know that our team have often felt like it's been really hard and everyone goes through seasons of stretch, and so what I say to people is look, you know, a rubber band, you know, should always be able to stretch, but it's got to go back to normal. But I will always ask people to stretch, you know, and there are times and seasons where we have to stretch, like leading up to Barangaroo or getting the bins finished or certain milestones. It's like, you know, we just have to get it done. You know, like we really have to dig in. However, give them the ability to work remotely or even overseas, and that pays off. And so I think, the flexibility and giving people a sense that they still need to live their lives.
Saxon:But when we need things done, I expect high standards and I expect that we get it done and we work hard and just get things across the line because we have to. And so if you're launching with a corporate, they don't really accept change of dates. You know you have to go live when they we agree to go live and that's it. So it's a combination of, you know, looking after people and giving them a great work experience, and the thing we say is we want this to be the best job they've ever had, but at the same time, we are trying to do something difficult and trying to change the world a little bit. And and trying to change the world a little bit, and that's not easy.
Ben:And it's not easy. What's one thing people are surprised by when they find it out about you.
Saxon:Look, well, I'm a scientist by trade, I mean, I guess I'm a chemist, so I'm deeply aware of the materiality side of the business. So something that's always fascinating is what makes something up. So even the cups. So we talk about PP cups, but acutely aware of the type of polypropylene and the bonds that are formed and how they're formed and why they're formed and why that's a safe material and that's a really important factor. And we're now part of the PR3 global standards for reuse. And we were the ones that raised the fact that all PPs are different and they actually need certain tests and quality standards so that people are aware that you're going to use a plastic using a well-formed, well-made plastic, which, again, people don't necessarily know. And I was a member of the CSIRO double helix club when I was like six, so I've been a nerd for a long time.
Ben:Well, I don't find that that surprising. Actually, after what you just told me, that's great. So the world needs more people like you. They need this idea of I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to keep going until I have. I'm going to figure it out. It's the only way we're going to solve all the social, environmental problems in this world, if we ever do so. If I'm a person thinking I want to be like this, I want to solve problems, I want to have a go, how does someone like that follow in your footsteps? Where do they begin? What advice have you got from?
Saxon:Look, I think it's just hacking at small problems and getting small wins. You know, sometimes we dream too big and I've often said sometimes we need to dream smaller, because a dream fulfilled is often more powerful than a dream that's unfulfilled. And so getting wins under your belt, forming ideas, seeing them through, executing until they're done, even if it's not significant, and then scale it, I mean, I think there's no reason why if you can't start something and form it and finish it, then you can't do that. You know 2x or 5x or 10x, it's the same principles.
Saxon:The reality is the principles of doing something small and getting it done is actually very similar to doing it at scale. Yeah, the complexity is there. Yeah, there's other things you have to learn, like managing a team, potentially raising capital, interacting at a higher level of government or corporate. You know there are different skills that need to be learned to achieve that, but it's not really that different. You know, ultimately, people are people, systems are systems and ideas are ideas. If you can bring them together, then you can solve a lot of things. So typically it's getting started, it's focusing on the execution and it's celebrating the wins and then scaling it once you've got some wins under your board. Great advice.
Ben:Now, if I'm a listener at home and I want to learn more about Borrow by Huskee, where do I go?
Saxon:Look, you can go straight to the website huskee. co, or Borrow has its own website, borrowbyhuskee. co, and you can see everything there.
Saxon:Love you to download the app, get involved? Love you to go and find a venue? There's a map on the app that you can go and visit a place and borrow a cup and just experience it and support it. And otherwise you can, yeah, find us on LinkedIn, find us on socials.
Ben:Great, thank you for your time.
Saxon:Thanks, Ben.
Singers:I'm going to change this world today. Make those bad things go away, hey
