Changemaker Joost de Kluijver (Closing the Loop): 'You have to use me especially in the beginning, but then put me in a straitjacket'

Joost de Kluijver is founder of Closing the Loop. By collecting electronic waste in Africa he hopes to counterbalance the growing problem of e-waste. His business model is already in good shape. But what about his role as leader of a sustainability company?"

Article by: Change.inc

What exactly does Closing the Loop do?

"We created a service called One for One. We focus particularly on the tech sector, that of telecom and electronics. Our service allows people to purchase electronics in a way that is a little more in line with thinking around circularity and sustainability. When our customers buy a new product, say a phone or laptop, we take the same waste product off the market and transport it to the nearest recycling plant. That is often Europe, because there are limited recycling facilities in Africa. However, we are working to set those up. For example, we are active in countries like Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. So we finance waste collection in those countries. There are often no good regulations in that area, so you see that electronic waste goes along with other waste streams, and is therefore incinerated. While you could get useful raw materials from it that you could sell on the market. The quantities involved are considerable. The other day a United Nations report revealed that about 60 million tons of e-waste are produced worldwide, of which only about 20 percent are recycled."

Is there any way for parties like you to work up to this massive accretion?"

"That should not be your short-term goal. It is not next year to arrange that we go from 20 to 80 percent recycling. But then again, that shouldn't be a reason to conclude that we can't do anything in the short term, and that we should just focus on legislation for 2030 and 2050. Of course, that legislation is also very important, but it will have zero impact in the next two or three years. Our position is primarily pragmatic. The signal we want to send is that you can do something concrete with circular thinking. It has commercial value. That will be a huge flywheel, which is very necessary to prevent, collect and recycle more waste."

What exactly is your revenue model?

"We have been profitable for two years. Actually, our revenue model is very simple. When our customers, Vodafone for example, sell a laptop or phone, they pay us a few euros to collect a product in Africa. And if things go well, it costs us a little less than those few euros to do that."

In the past, you have described yourself as an impatient type. A customer once rated you as 'very, very, very impatient'. How do you know how to turn that impatience into something useful towards the outside world?

"I think most people won't think I'm doing anything useful with that. They just can't appreciate it. That's fine as far as I'm concerned. I'm not an inspiration or motivator, despite being the owner of the company. Maybe I should take on that role more, but ultimately everyone has their own reason for working on this initiative. I do try many other things. For example, I'm working with our partners in Africa to set up waste recycling. Other times I'm doing storytelling or just being commercial again. I think I create a lot of hooks, so people see that I have been working for a long time on something that actually leads somewhere. Of course it happens that people don't want to talk to me anymore because they think I'm pushing too much. But at least then I hope to have planted a seed. There are plenty of other people, both inside and outside my organization, who can then take over from me. Who have realized that they need to use Joost especially in the beginning, and then put him in a straitjacket in a corner."

You also mentioned that you find the idea behind Closing the Loop complicated to explain to potential clients. How do you get across that?

"Actually, the idea is simple, but my problem was that I didn't know who I was telling it to. If I tell our story to an expert in circularity, it has a very different connotation than if I tell it to a potential customer who wonders why they should pay for a more sustainable product. Who wants to know: what's in it for me? Fortunately, we now have someone doing our communications who is much better at that than I am.

For that matter, we are sometimes told by NGOs that our initiative is just too simple. That it does not bring about system or industry change. Just collecting waste is not enough, they say. I couldn't agree more. No one hears me say that our approach is enough. But it is a very good starting point. The criticism then is that companies would use our initiative to show how well they are doing, and that they are done with it. First, I think it is much better that they use our approach than that they do nothing at all. Secondly, I would find it very illogical for a company to say that they are done by our starting point. Then you will get everyone all over you, which is not commercially useful at all."

Do you feel so drawn to these NGOs that you want to raise your stakes?"

"No, because we never started this with the idea that this is the holy grail. My co-founder and I started because we thought it was crazy that everyone was pointing at each other when it comes to electronic waste. E-waste is the result of an industry that has advanced, and continues to advance, the world tremendously. Tech and telecom are industries we should be really proud of. Their products are iconic. Phones, for example, you even take to bed with you. But then suddenly they break down, become trash, and we think someone else should fix it. We thought that was very crazy. We wanted to show that you can collect e-waste, extract the raw materials and make money from it. That was our goal, and it still is."

What stumbling blocks do you face as a sustainable entrepreneur?

"As a social entrepreneur, you do sometimes find yourself in an interesting split. On the one hand, our company is doing well because we respond to waste recycling in Africa, where others do not. You can then show that you are doing good. But on the other hand, as a company you therefore thrive on the fact that others are not sustainable, and actually you thrive on the problem that is there."

"Another tricky point is that I think circularity as a theme has been hijacked by experts and consultants who talk a lot about roadmaps and ambitions. Visions for 2030 and 2040. This has created the perception among many people that circularity is something that suddenly arises because you formulate all kinds of goals. Not because you get your hands dirty, experiment and learn from it. For my organization, that creates all kinds of barriers. We are not concerned with drawing trees on websites and making plans for things we might do someday. We are only concerned with doing. The steps involved are risky and certainly not perfect overnight."

What would you do differently if given the chance again?

"Of course, you never know how something like that would have turned out. But I do think I would have handed over the hr part of my CEO role earlier. I would rather have put forward someone who is better with people than I am. My natural way of working is to just do something, and not like it when people don't do it well. That's obviously not a very effective leadership style."

Which parties would you like to work with again?

"Actually, pretty much all of the tech sector is on our list. We have set an internal goal of collecting 200 million phones by the year 2030. If we want to make such a big impact, we have to work with the big companies. Only recently have we partnered with T-Mobile, Odido and Vodafone. It would be great if we could add Samsung to that. Regionally we have done some work with that, but not yet globally."