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Comment by danieltillett | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

It might be worth teaming up with a local charity in this case. You could give the charity first pick of the items and then open it up to the public.

Good luck with the project.

> 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.

Well not at my council - they just throw everything into the back of the garbage truck and crush it on the spot. Not too much value left after this :)

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.

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