SmarterSorting receives VC backing

Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Regeneration.VC has announced the closing of a $7 million investment in Boulder, Colorado-based Smarter Sorting. The capital infusion is an extension to a recent $25 million investment led by California-based G2 Venture Partners Smarter Sorting received this year.

Smarter Sorting has devised a system designed to classify some 2 million consumer products and packaging using about 3,500 data points and 150 million chemical compounds.

“By providing new data and insights to retailers and the brands they sell, Smarter Sorting ensures products are safely handled, the environmental impact of the supply chain is minimized, fines are avoided, goods are diverted into the most environmentally friendly waste stream and donations to food banks are maximized,” the company says.

“Smarter Sorting is focused on using data and computing for a better world, and we are so excited to work alongside Regeneration.VC to help scale our environmental impact on making, marketing and moving consumer products more responsibly across the supply chain,” Smarter Sorting CEO Jacqueline Claudia says.

Smarter Sorting says it will use the additional funds to “further build out its team, digital products and data platform—ensuring consumer products stocked on retailers’ shelves move quickly, compliantly and safely throughout the supply chain.” The company says it currently is working with retailers including Costco, Albertson’s and Wegmans.

“We are thrilled to have Smarter Sorting join our growing portfolio of circular and regenerative companies tackling the climate emergency,” says Michael Smith, Regeneration.VC’s general partner. Smith now has joined Smarter Sorting’s board of directors as a result of the investment.

“Smarter Sorting’s approach sheds much-needed light on the chemical composition in our everyday consumer products and can lead to better product formulation, more circular pathways for waste streams, reduced emissions in shipping and handling of regulated products [to enable] vital positive outcomes in the consumer packaged goods and retail spaces,” Smith says. 

Smarter Sorting says its technology increases the volume and pace of donations from the inventory of retail partners into the hands of food bank operators such as Chicago-based Feeding America.

Regeneration.VC describes itself as an early stage venture fund for firms “driven by circular and regenerative principles,” including those involved in materials and packaging, consumer brands and products, reuse technologies and reverse logistics.