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Olyns
Olyns is a California-based climate-tech company that builds the Olyns Cube, an AI-powered reverse vending machine that lets shoppers recycle beverage containers at retail locations in exchange for cash refunds or rewards. Each Cube doubles as a digital advertising screen, so revenue from brand ads funds the cost of collecting and sorting material - making consumer recycling profitable and scalable without relying on the low value of the plastic itself.
Philip Stanger
Philip Stanger is the co-founder and CEO of Olyns, a Silicon Valley startup turning recycling into a self-funding business by pairing AI-powered reverse vending 'Cubes' with retail media advertising. A classically trained musician with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Yale, he scored films before founding indoor-positioning startup Wifarer, then led Apple Maps' indoor mapping team for five years. He started Olyns in 2019 after watching wildfires and floods hit the Santa Cruz Mountains where he lives, betting that recycling fails not for lack of technology but because its business model is broken.