Creating a Circular Green Waste Collection System for London Logistics

Recorra launched their award-winning Green Waste Recycling in 2024 to the great pleasure of property clients managing large green spaces and rooftop gardens. This recycling service enabled customers to turn garden clippings into compost via in-vessel composting at Envar rather than sending them for incineration. (Not only did incineration produce negative environmental outcomes, it increased the cost and volumes of their general waste.) However, many clients reached out to Recorra to ask if they could take their circular journeys one step further and buy back their compost to use again on their gardens. 

The Problem with Urban Compost Returns

To close the loop, Recorra needed to establish a new logistics system to bring compost back into central London. Typically, compostable waste is collected, processed, and then sold on to agricultural and landscaping markets, not back to urban commercial waste producers. As such, there was no existing logistics process for tracking, packaging and redistributing the products at the small retail quantities that clients wanted to buy. London landscapers didn’t want an agricultural tractor-load of compost dumped at their doors!  

When clients approached Recorra, they had already explored a range of other solutions, which had all failed. Sourcing compost independently lacked the circular story they wanted, and on-site composting proved impractical due to space, odour and maintenance issues. They needed an external provider to connect them to negotiate the product, purchasing platform and logistics.  

Digging for Circular Solutions

To solve these issues, and provide clients with the circular green waste collection they wanted, Recorra’s Head of Product, Innovation, and Circularity, James George, leveraged the internal capabilities of Recorra’s Workplace Supplies arm. He worked out that the compost producer could sell manageable pallet loads of material and transport them into London. Customers could easily purchase these through Recorra’s e-commerce platform, and orders could be sent digitally between Recorra and the compost producer.  

The Outcome: A Closed Loop

At the click of a button, clients could access the right quantities of their own compost, whenever they needed it. The first of its kind, this product required the extensive logistical expertise and commercial know-how of Recorra’s consultancy team to pull off. It was such a success that Broadgate Estate, one of the most engaged clients with this project, used their collaboration with Recorra to showcase their ESG credentials, and was nominated for an award at the National Recycling Awards as a result.