Bali Recycle Up
In these Startup Profiles, we talked to the YSI SEA Fellows of the Innovation Programme 2020 and asked them about their startups, challenges and ideas for a more sustainable future.
Bali Recycle Up focuses on waste recycling from various waste generation areas, starting with waste generated from ceremonial offerings in temples in Bali. As Bali’s first temple waste solution, Recycle Up aims to recycle floral waste into valuable products such as organic incense. 💐
Bali Recycle Up is one of the startups in our Innovation Programme 2020. We talked to the YSI SEA Fellows behind Bali Recycle Up: Made and Thao.
.Watch the video below to see them talk about their startup (at 2:08) in greater detail! Scroll down for the rest of the interview.
Made works on waste recycling and community empowerment in Bali. He has a PhD in Environmental Engineering, focusing on nitrogen removal. He had finished his PhD research in University of Porto and gave him more research network.
He has experiences in doing research on wastewater, solid waste management, and community-based sanitation. His interest in waste recycling brings him to build the Bali Recycle Up and is expected to be one of the biggest recycling facilities in Bali Island.
What made you interested in social impact?
Solid waste is one of the global issues that exists until now. Recycling is a solution to this, in order to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Recycling can also be connected to the community, in order to achieve a sort of circular economy.
What is success to you?
It is when I’m doing something that I love, and the people around me are happy. I want to create a good impact, and improve people’s lives.
Thao Ha
Thao has a track record of supporting corporate and startup teams with product launches, customer mapping and go-to-market strategies.
During her Management degree from the University of Bath, she completed a 13-month placement at the world's largest automotive company, Volkswagen Group (UK).
Passionate about the startup ecosystem, she then joined a London-based bike subscription company before moving back to Asia to pursue her passion for social impact and the circular economy.
Can you describe your idea/startup in one sentence?
We aim to become Bali’s first circular initiative to recycle temple waste into valuable products.
What made you interested in social impact?
Having studied abroad, I moved back to Vietnam last summer. It was only then that I realized some of the critical sustainability issues that we are facing are inherently systemic issues. What that means is that it will take a radical shift in infrastructure and resource distribution to even make a change. Even then, that will take years, if not decades.
Being a young person, I went on the internet and that’s when I found out about how social innovation could be the systemic solution to some of the radical issues that we are trying to solve today, from food waste, to clean energy to living a better circular economy.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
The biggest challenge is trying to get people onboard, particularly in developing countries, where awareness about sustainability is far lower than in western countries. However, what I’ve learned in the past few months is that many business owners in Vietnam are simply on survival mode all the time. What this means is that the argument is not choosing the planet over profit, but instead how can they do both things at the same time.
What lesson would you like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?
Always engage with your community. Whether that is the people that you are going to help directly or indirectly, or that is the people that you are going to need help from along the way. I think that alot of the time, aspiring entrepreneurs are so focused on finding the next innovative idea that we lose sight of existing ones. This is why it’s really important that you go out there and talk to the people. To me, success is being able to impact not just one person, but hundreds of thousands in my community.
Catch Made, Thao, and the rest of the 23 regional impact entrepreneurs at the YSI SEA Demo Day 2020!
