I grew up helping in the family print business, so handling paper and making stationery was in my DNA. Then seven years ago, I was working in an office job and noticed we had a lot of one-sided waste paper. At the same time, I was exploring on a personal level how I could impact the world in a positive way, so I decided to crown myself the environmental officer of my workplace and initiate a few things. We had a rule that every piece of paper had to be fully used on both sides before it went out for recycling, so we set up collection trays and a second printer to print on the back of the scraps. But we couldn't print on the backs fast enough, and ended up with boxes of it. Without really thinking I took it down to my dad's print factory and made notebooks out of it and handed them out to everyone at the office. Everyone loved them, then a month or two later people asked if they could buy more. That's when the idea came about to turn it into a company.
How did the business develop from there?
We then went through two years of figuring out what the company was and turning around our model. Originally people would collect paper and donate it, then we would create product and sell it, but that didn't work for a few reasons. So we then turned that model on its head by selling a recycling service and giving the product back, which created the basis of the business today.
What benefits did you see from running the business that way?
It enabled us to get around privacy and confidentiality issues, because it's 100 per cent your own waste paper that goes back to you. It was also better because we could charge people to upcycle and produce things they already buy, so we felt we were breaking the rampant consumer cycle.
It also became apparent how much more engaged people became. When someone collects their own paper and has it turned into notebooks, they get this positive feedback loop that's tangible and measurable. The relationship they have with waste is totally transformed and that can be leveraged off for other kinds of behaviour change in terms of waste in the workplace.
How many customers do you have and what sort of businesses are they?
Reza: We've had over 100 organisations sign up for the service and they range from small owner-operated companies to larger corporations and council departments. We've doubled the amount of partners and the amount of paper we're processing in the past 18 months. As of today we've managed to reuse 645,800 pieces of paper, and we've also implemented a campaign called The 1Million Milestone where we've challenged ourselves to reuse a million pieces of paper in New Zealand by the end of this year.
What are some of the challenges you've encountered developing the business?
Amanda: The way we run the business means it's really hard to access current funding models. We probably identify more as a social enterprise, so if we go to conventional financial institutions or organisations, we don't really fit their criteria, so there's a bit of a hole when it comes to funding for businesses like ours.
Reza: Another challenge is around education. When people enquire about Lovenotes, they'll often say they recycle their office paper already, but people don't always know the full story around where and how that's done through traditional channels.
What are some of your future plans for the business?
Reza: One focus of opportunity is schools, so we can provide our service to them but also provide educational resources for young people coming through. Using the offcuts from producing our stationery, we've also developed some beautiful gift cards embedded with seeds, so once you've read and enjoyed a card from someone you can put it in the garden and grow herbs or wildflowers from it. We've had great feedback on that, so we're now looking at developing a permanent product offering around that.
