Name:

Roger Green.

Age:

51.

What is your business called?

Brightwaste Recycling.

Where is it based?

Alloa, with offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

What does it produce, what services does it offer?

The company offers a direct waste and recycling collection service for commercial customers. We provide them with containers and supplies to enable simple commercial waste segregation which is fully compliant with Scottish regulations. We’ve taken what we see as an eco-friendly approach, using a fleet of smaller vehicles for collections rather than traditional, larger lorries.

Brightwaste also provides waste measurement and carbon reporting services as well as commercial waste education sessions to help customers achieve 80 per cent or better recycling rates.

To whom does it sell?

Any type of commercial operation that produces waste, from an office to an industrial site. While our initial focus is on the Central Belt and other regions of Scotland, the longer term aim is to grow the business across the UK.

What is its turnover?

Brightwaste is a newly re-launched business aimed at the wider Scottish marketplace. Last year we purchased the commercial and industrial division of an Alloa-based recycling business which had gone into administration. We built the customer base, mainly in the Forth Valley area, over the last 12 months generating £1 million turnover. We have much bigger, ultimately UK-wide ambitions for Brightwaste.

How many employees?

18.

Why did you take the plunge?

We saw a gap in the current recycling market which we are aiming to shake up by providing a great service that makes waste management as simple as possible for customers.

We are also keen to give businesses value-added advice and ensure they are able to demonstrate their environmental compliance and commitment to being good corporate citizens. We think this eco-friendly approach will resonate within the marketplace.

The biggest gap in the market however is the ‘knowledge gap’. People just don’t know what they can recycle and what they can’t. And as long as they don’t know, they won’t engage. We want to help people engage and to purposefully improve their recycling rates.

What were you doing before you took the plunge?

I founded Spotless Commercial Cleaning, which is now a UK wide business, while I was a University of Edinburgh student back in the late 80s. I have spent much of the past three and a half decades growing that business. We now service 900 clients across the UK through a network of offices covering Scotland and key urban areas of England. Two years ago I launched retail water and waste services provider Brightwater with my colleague Rich Rankin who continues to head up that business, now serving almost 3,000 businesses in Scotland.

How did you raise the start-up funding?

Brightwaste is funded through the profits generated in my other business interests so we’ve required minimal external funding.

What was your biggest break?

The purchase of the recycling operation out of administration was an excellent opportunity for us. It gave us a strategically placed base in Alloa to service Edinburgh and Glasgow (both 30 miles distance). As well as taking on their customer book, we can now collect and batch our waste in Alloa, ready to be re-sold into the circular economy.

What was your worst moment?

I was new to the whole business of Operator Licenses for Heavy Goods fleets. It took a lot of time and investment to properly align ourselves with the necessary license requirements.

What do you most enjoy about running the business?

I love the simple act of collecting waste, then baling it and selling it back for its next life.

All the empty glass bottles we collect, for example, get boarded on a boat in Leith, shipped to Portugal, recycled as wine bottles and sent out again around the world.

What do you least enjoy?

The smell. It takes some getting used to in this line of work!

What is your biggest bugbear?

The C-word. Contamination.

It’s a fact of life, we’re busy, we don’t always think too deeply where we place our waste. And on the whole we just don’t know. So a good sack of recyclable materials can be massively compromised if it contains teabags, apple cores and pizza remains.

What are your ambitions for the firm?

If I can prove our model in Edinburgh and Glasgow, I’d like to replicate it in Leeds and Manchester, and then even London.

Our approach is so simple and process driven that it could easily be franchisable.

What could the Westminster and/or Scottish governments do that would help?

If I had one wish, it would be a fairer revaluation of rates but on the whole I think the Scottish and UK governments have got it right. I’m not a fan of over-intervention. The more help they give the more it’s expected, and the more it’s expected the less self-determination we have. We have to work smarter to get what we want. Any legislation that helps SMEs is likely going to be to the cost of employees or consumers.

What was the most valuable lesson that you learned?

Happy staff means happy customers.

How do you relax?

With difficulty! But I live in Gullane in East Lothian so an evening walk on the beach with my wife generally helps.