The app that teaches Britain which bin —
starting with the UK's worst-recycling city.
Binly tells residents which bin every item goes in — voice-guided, hands-free, council-aware. The teaching moment IS the behaviour change. Rewards are the hook to get people in the app; the daily five-second "rinse this, lid off" feedback is what shifts the contamination rate. Free for residents. Sold as SaaS to councils. Funded by the £80–140 per tonne they currently waste on contaminated loads.
20.3%
Birmingham recycling rate
Defra 2024/25 — worst in England
65%
Statutory 2035 target
Defra Simpler Recycling
£80–140
Per-tonne rejection cost
Post-China-import-ban
317
English councils need this
Defra reform deadline 2027
The problem
English household recycling has been stuck at ~43% for a decade. Defra's Simpler Recycling reforms (2025–27) force every council to rebuild their waste service. The infrastructure is changing. Nobody has the behaviour-change tool to go with it.
Birmingham specifically: 20.3% recycling rate, the worst in England. The biggest reform in a decade arrives June 2026 — with no plan for the residents using it.
Why now (3 structural changes)
- 92% UK smartphone adoption — verification moves from collection-point hardware to point-of-decision software
- Free on-device AI — image classification that cost £0.30/call in 2015 now runs locally at zero cost
- Post-China-ban contamination cost — councils now pay real money to dispose of rejected loads, creating real budget pressure
Already shipped (self-funded)
- Web prototype live — barcode + voice + AR scanning, council-specific bin logic, reward UX, kids mode
- Bin Session (hands-free flow) — open camera once, hold up each item for 1s, app auto-logs + voice-announces the bin. Solves the "every item scanned" problem without 30s of phone-fumble per item.
- Bin-QR session attribution (live) — scan the bin's sticker mid-session, every subsequent item is anchored to that physical bin. Trust score recovers on verified correct binning; drops on mismatches. The whitepaper's Layer-2 is now a real flow, not a diagram.
- iOS app in TestFlight beta — Live Activities, home-screen widgets, Control Centre quick-scan
- Marketing site + UK-GDPR privacy policy
- 18-slide pitch deck + 11-section whitepaper
- Premium WEEE pickup flow — electronics auto-routed to a paid pickup service (revenue line £4.99–12.99/mo)
- Four-layer integrity pipeline — built, not just designed — verified residency, bin-QR session attribution, MRF audit feed, escalation ladder
- Innovate UK Smart Grant application drafted — £105k ask, £45k match, 12-month plan
Why this team can win
- Birmingham-resident founder, fixing Birmingham's problem in Birmingham — local credibility, community access
- Built every line shipped to date, including iOS native shell — no dependency on undelivered subcontracted work
- Council procurement awareness, integrity-pipeline-first design
Year 1 (2026)
90-day Birmingham/Lozells pilot · 500 active users · one council SaaS contract £40–80k
Year 2 (2027)
City-wide Birmingham · second council · Binly Premium subscription £4.99–12.99/mo
Year 3 (2028)
5+ English councils on SaaS · Premium across two cities · Series A position
The ask
£150–500k pre-seed angel round · or · one Birmingham ward to pilot in
Innovate UK Smart Grant in progress (£105k non-dilutive). Pre-seed unlocks a Letter of Intent → grant → bigger raise. One signed LOI from a Birmingham ward is the single highest-leverage thing that can happen this quarter.