Geekdom is a cornerstone of San Antonio’s startup and innovation ecosystem. Spread across four floors in a prominent downtown building, it houses approximately 40 startups and plays host to a steady calendar of events: game jams, hackathons, seminars, and tech conferences. It’s the epicenter of the city’s entrepreneurial and venture community.
Like many innovation hubs, Geekdom grapples with high volumes of everyday office & food packaging waste. Prior to the pilot, there was no structured process to recover or reduce this plastic waste stream.
Pilot goals:
- Understand employee interest and engagement around soft plastic recycling
- Measure volume and speed of soft plastic accumulation
- Evaluate SPC’s role in supporting Geekdom’s broader sustainability and community values
Approach
Geekdom saw potential in the SPC’s ability to foster a shared community action around sustainability. The device was installed in a common area used by many different startup teams throughout the day, encouraging collaborative stewardship.
The pilot was supported by custom signage near the kitchen/break room, table tents on community tables, and direct email outreach to all staff and tenants coordinated with Geekdom’s operations team.
Geekdom staff even made their own signage :)
Metrics:
- 1 SPC deployed
- 2 full soft plastic blocks created in under 2 months
- Employee participation was tracked qualitatively through conversations and visual observation
- Improvements are now in the works after receiving awesome critical feedback from staff on signage and the device’s instant recognizability as a recycling device.
Materials inserted:
- Mailers and plastic wrappers from startup equipment
- Grocery bags, sandwich wrappers, and snack packaging from shared lunches
- Miscellaneous soft film plastics found around events
“As someone who loves to recycle I want this in my home! It’s so easy to use, and gives me a way to recycle what is normally trash” - Julez Perez.
Summary
Geekdom views the SPC not just as a waste solution but as a community-building tool. In just two weeks, tenants filled a full block with soft plastics, demonstrating both engagement and the real waste footprint of a single floor. The operations team is now in deeper conversations with ClearDrop to potentially expand the pilot to multiple floors.
Their slow-roll strategy allows for organic feedback and culture-based insights, helping refine messaging and product design while reinforcing Geekdom’s mission to lead in innovation and sustainability.
