What if managing household waste was not a burden, but the easiest and most natural thing you do at home? And what if all our waste was actually processed?
That’s the question we are addressing at Clear Drop® trying to find innovative solutions for waste reduction in landfills coming from households.
We believe that real environmental change starts not with complicated recycling systems, but with smart, seamless solutions.
That’s why we’re pioneering the future of pre-recycling: a simple, effective way to prepare waste for recycling right where it’s created with the help of our home appliances. From tricky soft plastic packaging to everyday food scraps, we’re transforming how homes handle waste - and helping people move closer to a Zero-Trash lifestyle.
What is more important, we create a system where your soft plastic waste is processed with our partner network of recycling facilities and your organic waste is stored in the way it can still enrich the soil.
Why Clear Drop?
Clear Drop is a symbol of the neutral impact of humankind on nature. It is a metaphor for what remains after human consumption. Every day we as humans consume food and buy many products in packaging. It results in waste - plastic packaging, empty bottles, paper, glass, cans, organic waste etc. While only a marginal part of that is truly recycled, the footprint of human consumption is very high. The goal of Clear Drop is to reduce this footprint to a single clear drop.
A new concept of pre-recycling
Pre-recycling is the approach that meets current challenges where the recycling system can’t deal with all types of waste we generate. Pre-recycling means preparing waste for its further efficient recycling before it is dropped into the recycling bin.
Currently, some materials tackled by Clear Drop’s home appliances are literally not recycled as soft plastic, not being collected conveniently enough. The regular recycling process is often ineffective: trucks “transporting air”, and labor-intensive separation - together they consume a lot of energy, and resources and create pollution of their own.
With pre-recycling, discarded items are conveniently separated and prepared for recycling on the spot facilitating waste reduction. Further on - the material is prepared for storing at home and further delivery to the recycling facilities of our partners. It is cleaner, denser, more convenient for transporting and all-around more manageable for further processing. Moreover, we guarantee recycling.
The actual problems we address
Challenging soft plastic waste
An estimated five trillion plastic bags are used annually worldwide, not including numbers of film packaging and other types of soft plastic. Only 1% of households can recycle film at home today. Less than 10% of soft plastic is recycled, and the data is still not always being calculated and reported. Unlike some traditionally recyclable commodities, such as PET bottles or HDPE bottles, there is not very much publicly available information on the generation and composition of film and flexible packaging.
Soft plastic is perceived as a barrier to the efficient process of recycling other types of plastic while being put together in a blue bin for recycling (link to the previous blog post).
Soft plastics are lightweight, flexible and inexpensive to produce. This has made them popular choices for packaging. But this ignores the problems of disposal, including harm to nature and people when it ends up in landfills.
Unless it’s compacted in a solid substance that changes the process of processing, soft plastics can get tangled or stuck in machinery at recycling or waste-processing facilities, causing inefficiencies and disruptions in the process.
Clear Drop solution: compacting soft plastic waste
Clear Drop offers the first step in solving this problem – business and home appliances that can prepare soft plastic waste for further transportation and actual recycling.
Soft Plastic Compactor (SPC) significantly simplifies the soft plastic collection and transforms fluffy packaging into a shape-preserving 12 × 8 × 4-inch block.
It happens with the help of a patented plastic surface-softening technology to keep soft plastic compacted for storage and transportation that is safe for users and the environment.
SPC accepts all major types of soft plastic packaging (excluding PVC and PS which are dangerous by nature) like food wrappers, soft plastic containers, shopping bags, cling film, and other types of packaging from your purchases.
The device stores around one month of soft plastic waste and provides low energy consumption. The soft plastic prepared by the SPC is easy to pick up and transport, making it more manageable than any other option. The soft plastic block can be emailed to Clear Drop. We offer end-2-end service in collaboration with our recycling partners which adds more possibilities to soft plastic waste reduction in landfills.
Dealing with the consequences of organic waste
Organic waste is just as harmful to the environment as plastic if it ends up in landfills instead of being composted. When compostable materials, like food scraps and yard waste, are thrown in with regular trash, they end up in landfills. These materials could have been repurposed into nutrient-rich compost to enrich the soil and contribute to waste reducion, but instead, they take up valuable landfill space and contribute to 11% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
In landfills, organic waste decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen), producing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane is approximately 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, contributing significantly to climate change.
Organic waste in landfills contributes to the production of leachate – a toxic liquid that can seep into the ground, potentially contaminating soil and water sources.
Composting not only recycles nutrients but also helps sequester carbon in the soil, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Without composting, this potential benefit is lost.
Organics Collector: new technology to close the loop for organic waste
To not let organic waste end up in a landfill people don’t need to do composting by themselves to support waste reduction.
Clear Drop makes collecting organic waste at home convenient uninterrupted and without an unpleasant smell, leaks, dissolving organic bags, flies or the necessity to frequently empty the bin with one more home appliances, Organics Collector.
Organics Collector (OC) stores and gradually accumulates food waste for several days up to one week. At the same time, the device suppresses (slows down) the processes of reproduction of microorganisms in the stored waste. This helps to avoid the appearance of unpleasant odors and insects. Featuring non-energy-intensive processes, the OC consumes very little energy.
The unique combination of the O3 generator and filtration system makes sure unpleasant smell is eliminated. Additionally, while stored, the organics in OC undergo a dehumidification process, reducing their moisture content by 30–40%. This makes all OC-collected material easier to transport and pick up and preserves composting features of the material.
Once the bin is full, the dried organics can be disposed of at a municipal waste collection point or go to your local or community compost pit.
Clear Drop® Founder's Message
‘These are just the first two systems we’re bringing to market. The problem is massive, and Pre-recycling is still in its infancy. But many more solutions are coming. Our promise to the world is that everything processed by our appliances will be recycled — if disposed of properly. We wouldn’t do this if we couldn’t make a difference. Let’s work together to make our future look like a hopeful science fiction story — not the bleak dystopias we risk if we don’t change our approach to waste management.’ Ivan Arbouzov, Founder & CEO of Clear Drop®
