Glacier

San Francisco, CA

Glacier's mission is to end waste. Sound ambitious? We agree. But the UN estimates that we have only 11 years left to change our consumption patterns before we do irreversible damage to the environment, so we’re of the opinion that now is the time for big bets. We’re starting in the world of recycling, which has a huge opportunity for impact. Americans send 1.4 million tons of waste to recycling facilities every week (that’s about 4 Empire State Buildings, or 1.5 Golden Gate Bridges). We’re also really bad at it: 25% of what we put in our recycling bins isn’t even recyclable. These recycling facilities make a living by sorting our jumbled-up waste and they need to do it cheaply and accurately. Otherwise they go out of business and our recycling goes straight to the landfill. Even so, recycling facilities today use processes that are highly manual, expensive, and error prone. We plan to revolutionize the way these facilities use technology, to make them more streamlined, accurate, and profitable - which means more recyclables avoid the landfill, and more of our natural resources are protected. Our team draws from industry experience at MIT Robotics Lab, Bain, and Facebook. We’re united by our deep-rooted passion to make a big environmental impact, and we’re looking for other mission-driven, creative thinkers to help us right the ship on this truly global issue.