“With Oscar Circulair, we want to make cities free of waste”

Jan Willem and Remco Wagemakers both worked in the cultural sector, Jan Willem as a theatre impresario and Remco as a business manager. In 2017, they decided to use their time, knowledge and energy to contribute to solving the climate crisis. They started a consulting firm and slowly grew into experts on solutions to corporate waste. When they work out a proposal to solve the waste problem of the Westergasterrein in Amsterdam, they come up with a solution that does not yet exist. Jan Willem: “Then we were asked if we didn’t want to start doing this. Because we believe in this solution, we started working on it in 2019 and founded Oscar Circular.”

In busy urban areas, waste collection creates a lot of heavy truck traffic. Also, businesses have insufficient incentives to separate their waste. Oscar Circulair provides central collection in these areas, extracts high-quality raw materials from the waste in cooperation with the companies so that less residual waste remains and ensures that far fewer polluting transport movements are needed in the area. Their employees – called Oscars – collect waste and other resources twice a day, seven days a week, using electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Oscar Circulair is the leader in area-based waste collection. “We now collect 16 different streams. Our model ensures that the percentage of residual waste at entrepreneurs goes directly from 60 to 30 per cent. After that, we will look together at how we can reduce the residual waste percentage even more,” Jan Willem said.

According to Jan Willem, the commodity transition towards a circular economy can only be shaped socially. “The personal contact between the Oscars and employees of associated companies is very important. It creates involvement and awareness and it increases knowledge about waste management among the companies’ employees,” explains Jan Willem. A large proportion of the Oscars have a vulnerable position in the labour market or a work disability. They join Oscar Circulair through various social employment partners.

Because the Oscars collect the waste inside the companies, there is no need for containers to be taken to the streets anymore. Jan Willem: “Because we have a resource hub and drive electric vehicles, it saves 900 rubbish trucks a year in the Westergas area, for example. That reduces emissions and makes for a safer and more liveable neighbourhood.” From the hub, everything will be transported to sustainable processors who will take quality streams and residual waste out of the city in large volumes. In doing so, Oscar Circulair looks at the type of means of transport, the distance the streams will travel and what happens to them afterwards. “We want it to be processed into semi-finished or new products and also to be able to say to customers; ‘this is what happens to your raw material stream’. We want to change the system and the market of waste processors and transporters.”

Oscar Circular has also built a price incentive into its model to get companies to use fewer raw materials and separate better. “With us, better separation means a lower bill. Also, if you bring down the total volume of waste as a company, you are cheaper. With us, residual waste is more expensive than all other streams.”

Getting a foot in the door within a highly competitive waste market is not easy. “People are very willing to do a little extra, but it should not cost too much. We want to do well and change the system, but have to compete with companies that are purely financial and shareholder-driven.” Support from funders is a big help. An investment in 2023 from a consortium of impact investors, consisting of ImpactCity partners DOEN Participaties DOEN Participaties and Rabo Foundation, and the Social Impact Fonds Rotterdam (SIF-R), will allow Oscar Circulair to expand from Amsterdam and Rotterdam to other cities. What Jan Willem did not expect is that such an investment also makes it easier to convince other parties. “Because DOEN Participations invests in us, people know that our company has been properly screened. That we are not building a bubble castle.”