Tim DraperFounder and Managing Partne, Draper Associate · I back the ideas that look crazy first

♻️ Turning plastic waste into opportunity

26 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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0:44

Hashim Akbar's Reupcycle App pays people for plastic waste they collect. Over 70% of the 4 million tons generated annually ends up in the environment. The company processes it back into raw material for industrial use, creating income for collectors and supply for manufacturers.

Chapters

So I am Hashim Akbar. I am the founder at Reupcycle App, and the core problem that we're trying to solve is that we want to reduce plastic pollution in the environment and save the world. We generate 4 million tons of waste plastic every year, and more than 70% goes back into the environment. The first thing they asked me, do you make money? How do you make money from collecting plastic? So then I explained to them how we make it. We convert it back into raw material and give it to industries utilizing it as a raw material. So we pay people for their waste. And when we pay people, they're like, okay, we're getting money for free for something we were never getting money for.