Droppie, a chain of recycling shops that pays Dutch residents for sorted household waste, plans to grow from 13 outlets to 70, after raising €4.2 million from investors.
The business was set up in 2023 and lets people hand in clothes, old phones, frying fat, plastic packaging, bottles and cans in return for a small payment, and says it now has more than 72,000 users.
The funding round, announced on Monday, drew backing from Amsterdam’s climate and energy fund and a Rotterdam and Amsterdam social impact fund, the Volkskrant reported.
People who drop off separated waste are paid 10 to 20 cents per kilo. The company has shops in Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht, and wants to open more in other big cities, where it says overflowing waste containers leave recyclable material dumped on pavements and sent to incinerators.
Missing the deposit target
The expansion comes as the Dutch deposit-return system continues to fall short. Producers are required to collect at least 90% of the bottles and cans they put on the market, a target that has been missed for years. Plans to raise the deposit to lift collection rates were shelved late last year.
Verpact, the organisation responsible for collecting bottles and cans on behalf of producers, said in September that nearly a quarter of deposit-bearing plastic bottles were not handed back in 2024, leaving consumers around €139 million out of pocket.
How the shops work
Droppie collects deposit bottles and cans in partnership with Verpact, and its shops have machines that can take up to 200 at a time. It also runs parcel points for Vinted and DHL.
Co-founder Stef Traa said the shops stood out from ordinary collection by focusing on the quality of the waste streams, using an AI-driven machine the company calls the DropBot to check what is handed in through image recognition.
Around 72% of the internet routers it collects are reused, he told ANP, while used frying fat is turned into more sustainable aviation fuel.
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