
Sydney startup Curbit lets users pick up someone’s unwanted goods from the kerb - dean_mcpherson
http://www.startupdaily.net/2016/02/sydney-startup-curbit-lets-users-pick-someones-unwanted-goods-kerb-free/
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femto
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.

~~~
danieltillett
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?

~~~
dean_mcpherson
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.

~~~
prawn
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.

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jonesb6
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.

~~~
dean_mcpherson
Thanks jonesb6 :)

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drallison
[http://www.freecycle.org](http://www.freecycle.org)

[https://www.freecycle.org/about/background](https://www.freecycle.org/about/background)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network)

~~~
jsankey
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.

~~~
sien
Freecycle is pretty terrible in Australia.

Gumtree (craigslist equivalent in AU) 'for free' works far better.

~~~
danieltillett
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.

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Sarki
Nice project, for the record this is existing since 2006 and covers France,
Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. [https://donnons.org/](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.

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megablast
Surely this is just an app, not a startup?

~~~
dean_mcpherson
Curbit is my side project, I work for travel startup townske.com.

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Outdoorsman
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...

Good luck!

~~~
prawn
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).

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bakadana
[https://www.tushare.com/](https://www.tushare.com/) tried the game for some
time, couldn't make it profitable.

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mrmondo
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).

~~~
yitchelle
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.

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dean_mcpherson
If you want to keep up with future developments, there is a waitlist at
[http://curbitapp.com](http://curbitapp.com).

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ancaster
There's also [https://trashnothing.com](https://trashnothing.com), which is
friendly UI over freecycle/etc..

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samstave
It is interesting how basically all that Craigslist has had to offer in the
last 16 years has moved to "CL microservices" as it were...

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Xorlev
I appreciate the name. Curb+it, Cur_bit_.

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fucking_tragedy
Does Craigslist have a section for Australia?

~~~
somedangedname
IMO Craigslist has no traction in Australia. The big player in classifieds is
Gumtree [0] which is owned by Ebay.

[0] [http://www.gumtree.com.au/](http://www.gumtree.com.au/)

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simula67
How is Olx for this purpose ?

