Scaling real-time waste intelligence for businesses with Spare-it’s co-founder Laurent Canneva 

Robin Haak: Great to have you here, Laurent - thank you very much for your time. I wanted to start with a post you wrote on LinkedIn about the fact that there are over 9,800 different municipal recycling programs in the US alone. How is Spare-it helping its customers to tackle this?

Laurent Canneva: More than six years ago, we started tackling the maze of municipal solid waste rules, which are all different because the downstream management is different. You needed to take into account the machines, the capabilities, everything. But to me, the most incredible gap that exists in this space today is the data gap.

This means that, if you look at any big building in Frankfurt, Berlin, or Paris, we know exactly how much energy is being consumed – by floor, by appliance, by building. We know how much water is being consumed, again, by the floor, or by the company. But for waste? There’s nothing. The only data points that exist are from the dumpsters, the oil trucks from the waste management industry, and what companies try to do manually to assess whether things have been sorted properly.

What are companies doing today? They pay a crew of people to spend a day in the basement manually analyzing the trash. They weigh it as it is sorted, reopen the bags, re-sort it, weigh it again, and then provide a report. So, companies have the oil truck data, the dumpster weight, and maybe this one-off report. And that’s what they use to report what they’re consuming, right? Plus – think about it: if you're BCG or EY and you occupy four floors of a 30-story building, – no one has your data because, before now, there was no metering service available.

So to me, that’s the first striking thing. There’s a huge data gap when it comes to waste streams and circular data management. If you don’t own your data, you can’t manage it. And right now, we’re all reporting things that are essentially guesswork.

Today, so many companies are trying to prove how sustainable they are, and show what they're doing for the planet. Can you walk us through how the product works?

Yes, the pressure is on companies to do more for the planet. Companies are trying to save time in reporting and auditing to focus on action. Therefore, the demand for accurate and audible data is on the rise. And not just any data, data that can be automatically consolidated into your ESG or building management software, especially in the EU where there is a regulatory obligation with CSRD.

So now that we’ve clarified the problem, the question then becomes: how do we provide data to these companies? Our idea was to build a scalable, plug-and-play solution - something easy to deploy. So here’s how it works.

First, we collect quantitative data. And to do that, we use IoT smart scales that we install underneath the various waste containers inside a building. So imagine a typical sorting station in your office - we place smart scales under the general waste bin, under the recycling bin, under the compost bin, paper, metal, glass, e-waste - whatever streams you’re using. As soon as we do that, you can start to capture the quantity of waste, which is key.

And quantity is determined by weight, which is important, because you can’t extrapolate weight from an image. Think about a bottle that’s half full - just by looking at it, you can’t determine its weight. So weight is critical. Our IoT scales inside the containers, capture the weight, and we connect the scales across your organization. Then we map this data directly onto your floor plan.

That’s the first data point: quantity by weight.

The second data point is quality by image. And here, we’re leveraging smartphones - because we believe that this is the most sustainable and scalable approach. So, for example, either the janitorial team or the sustainability team uses our app to snap quick pictures from the top of the bin. It’s very simple, they follow the app, which guides them through the floor plan, and they upload the photos.

Once we receive those, we analyze them and can now recognize over 100 different types of items. And here’s where local context comes in. We’ve built sorting algorithms based on local regulations. Whether you’re in Hamburg, Frankfurt, or Berlin, these regulations are not the same. Our system knows the local rules and can flag whether the item is in the right bin, if it’s a contaminant, or if it’s a missed recycling opportunity.

So now, companies have access to both quantity by weight and quality by image, mapped across their floor plans. And we can do this across all their offices.

You’ve already landed some big enterprise clients, so what are your goals for the next few years in terms of sales?

Right now, we’re working across several verticals. Let me cover the other verticals very quickly. We’re also working wth higher education institutions in the U.S as the universities have a leadership role to play. We’re also working with larger public venues - airports, stadiums, amusement parks. And the last is more of a partnership with the real estate industry. People or companies who own the buildings also have a problem. They have regulatory pressure from the government, but they are not the ones consuming and creating waste; the tenants are. So together, we can partner up to help them decarbonize.

We started in the office space – banks, consulting, and tech. We have clients that are in the top 10 global brands in each of those categories. Then, we moved into retail and food & beverage. The challenge there is that these companies operate thousands of locations across the globe, and have zero waste data. Why? Because often, the person collecting waste from one shop is doing the next shop too, and they don’t separate or report on the streams. So again, there’s no data. Food & beverage has been especially interesting because we’re helping them tackle food waste, which is a huge issue. And it ties directly to their P&L. So if you take the example of a global coffee chain, let’s say one with 30,000 stores, they really feel the impact of food waste.

You mentioned food waste as a particularly urgent issue in F&B - can you talk more about what kind of impact Spare-it is having there?

Not only can we help them better understand how much food in the back office is being thrown away, i.e., how much cash is being taken out of their P&L, right? We can help them to better predict what they need on Mondays in March, for example, and we can also help them valorize. That’s a very important thing, they can valorize the effort they are making to recirculate. In this case, in the U.S., for all F&B companies, there is a federal tax incentive for them to send edible food to the food bank.

So, when they send edible food to the food bank, they can be taxed two times the raw value of the product. So, not only are they saving on their P&L, but they can also get tax relief. But they aren’t measuring how much is being sent to food banks. Until now, without us, they can’t measure it.

Let’s go back for a moment - when we first met, things weren’t looking so easy for Spare-it. Can you talk about that moment just before we invested?

Even though the company was founded in 2017, we didn’t start the work before 2019. I was working on Spare-it alongside my full-time job until 2023.

So you were still working full-time - what pushed you to finally go all in?

What happened is, I was doing this on the side. I was focused on human health at that time. I enjoyed the experience of running Spare-it; we were doing it for fun. We started in the household, you know, in our house, just to measure our own waste. But then things became more serious. After COVID, the U.S. economy started picking up again, and so I had to leave my corporate job because we had too much demand.

My co-founder made the move first. He left his corporate job in search of a more tangible return and impact on his work. I was working on Spare-it alongside my full-time job but since I’ve quit that job and gone all-in with Spare-it, we’ve started to run. And here comes the real entrepreneur challenge: to try to find the right balance between cash and operations. At that time, we already had the headquarters in Boston and the affiliate in Hong Kong.

That’s when you came in, Robin. What’s brilliant about a solo VC like you is that you’re looking more at the people. You look at the business, for sure - the big picture. But then you realized that the data gap is very real. You looked at the people and asked, “Do I think these people can transform that vertical? Do I think this team can do it?” And then, indeed. So you arrived in the company at a moment when the company is at a pivotal point and wondering if they are going to be able to scale. As a solo VC, you gave us an impulse and came in with new energy and your network.

And this network is full of energy, and together, this positive energy has brought positive momentum. So that’s really what I love about this very difficult task that you have as a solo VC: taking risks early, but giving energy. Even more than the money, that’s what’s important, what transforms is the energy. I greatly respect these early risk takers who are walking the walk and bringing this transformative energy with them.

You now have a board member from Robin Capital, Eric Gellé, and you’ve also been working with designers for a relaunch and rebrand.

Yes, you introduced us to Eric Gellé as a board member. He’s very experienced in sales, and we work well together. Until earlier this year, I was the only one in charge of sales. Eric and I have a similar mindset. So he is a great fit. You were very smart with that choice.

Eric told me something like, “I’ve been in organizations where, for the sake of a Series A or B, we rebranded everything - and then I had to explain to every customer a new name that didn’t make any sense with the product. We lost so much time.” These are important things - they need time to be digested. We’ve rebranded but we haven’t changed our name yet. The new website looks great.

Spare-it– how are you communicating the value of what you're offering?

By showing our understanding of the problem. Everybody gets it in one minute – the solution. We just need to show them a few images. Then it clicks. You see, “Okay, you’re reading data, you’re connecting bins.” And you realize: I don’t even have to change my bins - you just set it up and it’s that easy.

And the value proposition, like you said, is so important. What’s the value proposition for me? In F&B, for example, it’s saving food waste and unlocking tax benefits. That’s extremely clear.Organizations are achieving a triple return on investment. On the environmental side, we’re helping companies to reduce waste and CO2, while helping them gain valuable certifications. On the social side, we’re engaging their people, gamifying the reduction of waste and CO2 , and boosting their culture for sustainability. And last but not least, we’re helping companies to improve their sourcing and logistics, save time, and avoid fines.

Let’s go back a bit. You were working in global health, and you met your co-founder, Laurent Meunier. How did the two of you come up with the idea behind Spare-it? Why was this the direction you wanted to go in?

The founding story is actually pretty fun. It happened here in Boston. I was on Cape Cod, sitting on the beach – this beautiful space, but there was plastic and glass everywhere. We were just there with a beer and a campfire, putting the world to rights, you know how it is?

And that night, I remember saying: it’s insane,  we don’t measure anything. A week later, I was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I went around and saw everything in the house was connected: smart toasters, smart fridges… There was an app that told you when your toast was ready. I thought, “Guys… a toaster app? But no one’s connected the bins?” You’re missing something huge. The fridge is connected to get you more food faster… but no one’s tracking what happens when you throw it away.

That was my takeaway from the CES show. I said, “Next time I come back to this show, I’m going to bring what I want to see: connected bins.” That was it. I was going to connect the bins. Then I started thinking about go-to-market, and realized B2C would be a cliff. It’s an amazing challenge, but B2C is brutal. So I started with B2B, which turned out to be way smarter.

Laurent and I we're both French American. We're both in Boston. So we connected through the French community. Initially, as friends. We are the same age, and we had a midlife crisis in our 40s. We were both working in a beautiful organization. We had great jobs, nice pay, but we saw our Executive President get fired, and we thought that they were really good, you know. And we thought to ourselves: are we going to go down that path, you know? And so, we shifted, stopped working, and started working on Spare-it and the system before I did, and  I joined a bit later on.

What drives you? What's your biggest motivation at the moment?

The motivation is in the creation. The motivation is the feedback we have from everyone around us, everyone saying, “Guys, we don’t get negative feedback.” There was zero churn in the US in 2024. And the people we’re hiring right now keep saying, “It’s amazing.” Even when we talk to prospects, sometimes they respectfully tell us, “Well, it’s not the right timing,” but you never hear, “I’m not interested, stop calling me.” Because they all know there’s a big problem to be solved.

So, that gives you energy. It confirms there’s a problem that hasn’t been addressed and that we need to solve. I think I was always an entrepreneur. I’ve worked in a large corporation like Sanofi, which offered great opportunities – it’s big, so you can navigate through different areas. I worked in vaccines, in oncology, in rare diseases - all amazing missions. But I was always trying to be more creative than the machine, and the machine was too slow for me. I couldn’t handle it at some point. I remember one of my executive bosses telling me, “You should go into a startup - your ideas are great, but we can’t execute them in this kind of organization.” So it was always there. What motivates me today is the feedback from people, from my kids, and the deeper purpose of having a healthy planet. That connection with nature - for me and my family - is extremely important.

Last question, what would you say are your top three achievements?

In my life, the top achievement so far... well, the first one is not really achieved - it’s a never-ending journey: being married to my wife and having together 4 beautiful children - we are blessed. For me, it’s transformative. It’s ongoing, not a completed milestone, but it’s changed my life. So that’s one: family. Then, of course, our four kids, who came from that marriage and relationship. That’s the most important one.

And the second one, I think, is embracing this entrepreneurial journey. I was born in Brittany, in a family of doctors, in an environment that was local, really sedentary. But I was always outgoing. I went to business school, I changed cities, I changed countries, I wanted to go to the US, and I did.

Now I’m here, and in the US, everyone is running, everyone is an entrepreneur. So I thought, let’s try it myself. That freedom, that risk - leaving a good salary in your 40s, deciding to stop being paid to build something - that was huge. And you have to do it with your wife, so those two achievements are connected. It’s like a fifth child. But it’s incredible.

The third one is not here yet, but my next challenge will be in about 20 years. When I’m done with this, when I don’t have the same physical energy, I want to focus on photography, maybe painting or poetry. Something more reflective. Something creative for when your body slows down.

So more of a creative path in photography?

More on the photography side, yes.

Well done for taking the leap, going for it, and sticking with something that you’ve worked on for a long time.

Thank you, Robin. We need to pay attention to every detail, and each step of the journey requires a different set of skills. I think we have to keep listening, really listening, to what people tell us, and take the best out of that advice.

Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me today, Laurent.

Thank you so much, Robin. I appreciate the space you’ve given me to share the journey. It’s conversations like this that make you reflect and feel even more energized to keep pushing forward.