Careful. Putting stuff on the kerb outside of official kerbside collections is considered illegal dumping in many Australian cities. It's hard to prosecute though, as the council generally needs to catch the offender in action ("not my stuff on the footpath guv"). Unless the law changes, it seems like a bad idea to dump something on the kerb, then post proof of your actions to a website. Councils will potentially view Curbit as an evidence collection service, rather than a recycling service.
Can anyone from Curbit confirm whether this will be an issue? It might be as simple as telling people to put the items in their front yard, rather than on the footpath.
Hey femto, I'm Dean McPherson (@dean_mcpherson), the dev making Curbit. Our current plan is exactly that, if the user is posting their own stuff, we ask them to place it in a legal, accessible location. This is accomplished by asking them for special pickup instructions (e.g. "On the porch", or "On top of the mailbox").
The other big use case though is reporting stuff that others have dumped. Using the app makes no statement that you put the stuff there, and we in no way are trying to encourage people to break the law :)
Thanks for the response Dean. One also needs to be careful if picking stuff up without the owner's permission, as it is technically theft. Granted that prosecution is unlikely.
Maybe councils would be prepared to pay for the "reporting stuff that others have dumped" aspect? If not, they might pay for a "report stuff that needs our attention" aspect: using Curbit's infrastructure to provide a stream of pictures of pot holes, broken signs, etc. with attached time/GPS coordinates?
IIRC, in America items placed near bins, used for regular refuse pick up fit into the legal category of "abandoned" property, and are thus pretty much fair game...or are treated as such for all practical purposes...
Where I live that seems to be the case...no one cares...
That is, unless local (city) codes legislate differently...
Creating services for local government to use is definitely an avenue of monetisation we will investigate later down the track if the app gains traction.
Obviously however, user privacy and encouraging the core use of the app is the primary concern, and we won't pursue any method of monetisation that will jeopardise that.
I'd use something like Curbit if it matched my stuff with charities that want it.
I believe (on faith) that local charities make better use of my stuff. My "go to" charity is the local services for the blind, because an ex-gf works for eye surgeons.
Though it'd be more convenient, I'm loathe to give to Goodwill (greedy execs, bad labor relations), Salvation Army (homophobes, jesus freaks), Red Cross (misrepresenting how donations are used).
They pick up your stuff, you choose a charity, they sell the item to someone else and the proceeds go to the charity. As it turns out, most charities want cash not my old bookshelves but (the confusingly named) Community Thrift Store sorts it all out.
That's a cool idea. A lot of charities in Aus will come and pick up stuff that's valuable if you organise it.
With Curbit we're really trying to create infrastructure for one way gifting that takes the weight of organisational weight off the donor. There is nothing stopping charities from picking up items listed on Curbit though.
Yes it is illegal, but if my council is anything to go by the chance of anyone using curbit’s data to prosecute anyone is close to zero.
This basically happens organically anyway. There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value (and lots of stuff of no value too). All that gets left to be collected by the council is the absolute rubbish (rotting mattresses, etc).
What I want to know with these sort of startups is how do they plan on making money?
At the moment, we're not really interested in monetising. We're treating this as infrastructure that we wish existed that doesn't. However, if it does turn out to solve a problem for people, I'm confident that we will be able to generate enough small methods of monetisation to keep the doors open.
Might be related to your current venture, but I'd use an app whereby neighbours notified each other of any spare bin space they had that week. I could often use extra recycling or green waste space, but hate being the guy roaming the street at night trying to stuff garbage in random bins.
> There are teams of pickers who come around just before council pickups and take away anything of value
That's illegal too, someone was recently prosecuted for this. Councils own anything put out for council cleanup. They make money selling and recycling this stuff.
EDIT: My council (like many others) don't enforce this rule. They do come down hard on illegal dumping though.
Councils picking up and disposing of stuff is paid for by the council. Councils are your customer.
Collect stats on the number and type of items picked up per council. If you get any traction, tell the councils it will cost X$ to keep the service running in their area.
This will only work if it solves the problem of illegal dumping. I have yet to see anything of any value dumped in my area outside of the normal council pickup times and during these times the pickers do this job already of hauling away all the stuff of value.
I am amazed at how low in value the pickers will go. I have thrown out stuff with almost zero value and they have taken it away. My wife and I are always amazed at what gets taken by them.
This is a very, very, very, common problem in American college towns where students frequently have to move on short notice. It is very common for the local homeless and impoverished to idle outside dorms, apartment complexes, or rental units, and immediately dig through anything left out on the curb or in the garbage. They're often able to scrounge items still in their original packaging, you know that stuff mom sent you that you never needed, and will sell them at the local pawn shop etc. for pennies on the dollar.
Having recently necessitated the service, it is very expensive to store or move even medium sized items in this situation, as local and national movers/storage companies are well aware of the situation and will fleece customers with outrageous fees and even vulturous customer service (oh you didn't pick up our call? +$20 reschedule fee..).
If 1) they can make themselves accessible to a large number of college students and 2) they provide a smoother user experience then craigslist and co (possibly by partnering with University housing associations cough cough) I can see this being incredibly successful.
Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.
That is until you get some idiot ringing you 20 times asking you to deliver the free item to them. They seem surprised when you say no that you aren’t going to spend 2 hour driving to give them the item for free.
Hey jsankey, the advantage of Curbit is simplicity. All existing solutions require a fair amount of effort of the person wanting to get rid of something. Freecycle is solving the exact same issue, but I feel that the burden that comes from having to manage pickup / messaging / condition reports all from a very rough web UI deters a huge portion of the population. We shouldn't have to work to get rid of something for free :)
Compared to classifieds in general, it can be much simpler to use, because money isn't changing hands.
Thanks for the reply Dean. It seems there is room to make this easier, although it can be hard to find and convince the market of that when there is something "good enough" out there. Hope you have some luck.
An idea, to take or leave: a very active niche for this kind of thing is parents of young children. Very young kids (babies/toddlers) in particular churn through a lot of "stuff" by growing out of it before it wears out. Parents are very active on a range of Facebook groups trading this stuff (though not usually for free, just cheap). In fact the groups are so active that I know people using them daily, and the biggest issue with offloading stuff is posting are lost in the noise. If you're looking for a nice to focus on this is a strong one.
Thanks jsankey, I agree. One of our key target demographics are parents home with children. From anecdotal experience, they are a good fit to both the supply and demand of temporary use items, and also more likely to be working on restoration projects or DIY that will benefit from free materials.
Nice project, for the record this is existing since 2006 and covers France, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.
https://donnons.org/
("Donnons" means "giving" in french)
Perhaps you'll have more impact worldwide with this, it's never a bad idea to let ones enjoy what is a now a burden for others.
Nice to see someone organizing the re-purposing of perfectly re-usable items...
Not sure what's in play in Australia, but in the U.S. there are more than a few individuals (entrepreneurs) who drive around looking for "curbed" articles...
These are gathered and added to second-hand shop inventories, for resale...
If that's true in Australia it's something you might want to be aware of...you might consider a way of ensuring that those interested in an article get a fair shot at it...just a customer satisfaction thing...
Yes, the same happens in Australia. Typically councils have "hard refuse" opportunities for disposal of larger items.
I'm in South Australia. In my home area, I can call for one pick-up per financial year, totalling 2 cubic metres. In my office area, there's a period once per quarter where you can put items out for collection.
There are people who drive around with a cage trailer grabbing recyclable items, some for personal use, some for resale.
Besides these "official" options, a few people use Freecycle (mailing list, bit annoying) and others use Gumtree (like Craigslist).
In Melbourne people seem to leave stuff out on the curb all the time and people just come and grab what they want, after its been there a week or so the council comes round and picks it up (I assume).
I can confirm this, especially for inner suburbs like St.Kilda, Brunswick etc. I did it a couple of times when I have excess stuff that I don't need anything further.
Can anyone from Curbit confirm whether this will be an issue? It might be as simple as telling people to put the items in their front yard, rather than on the footpath.