“The new business-to-business platform gives organisations visibility over all the things they already own and enables them to share things they no longer need with others. This helps drives down procurement costs and redirects waste from landfill,” says Mutu co-founder Ben Redwood.
Mutu originally began as a peer-to-peer marketplace where people could list items in their homes and garages and rent them out to others in their community, reducing the need to constantly buy and dispose of things.
In late 2021, Mutu was approached by some of New Zealand's largest companies asking how they could use the digital platform on a much larger scale.
“Employees in big businesses were telling us how hard it was to see what assets their company owned. They also said there was often confusion about what to do when something was no longer needed. Seventy per cent of the organisations we surveyed told us they threw away things that still had value.”
Mutu makes it easy for businesses to create an online register of all the assets they own. They can upload data to the platform from an existing asset management system or by smartphone.
Listings are then visible to everyone in the company.
“Mutu can help a business make better use of its assets and help it avoid buying items it already owns.”
Items that are no longer needed can be made available to other departments of a company or sold to other organisations via an online marketplace. This helps redirect assets that still have value away from landfill.
“Kiwis send enough waste to landfill each year to fill the Sky Tower 650 times. By recapturing even a small percentage of this and repurposing it, we can remove tonnes of waste from landfill every year,” says Ben.
Any action that takes place on Mutu is reported on real-time dashboards making it easy for users to see the impact their actions are having on the environment.
“There is a lot of interest around our reporting. Organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand are actively looking for sustainability initiatives that they can implement to reduce waste and carbon emissions.”
With the official launch of the new Mutu business model, the team is looking for new organisations to join them on their mission.
“We are currently working with customers like Transpower, Hutt City Council and Massey University. When you think about the amount of assets these organisations own and the impact we can have there, the future looks very exciting.”
Photo: Mutu co-founders Toby Skilton (left) and Ben Redwood