Belinda Paul, founder of RCYCL, is not your average ecom innovator. A former fashion and retail exec with experience in product development, brand management and sustainability, she’s now leading one of the most creative add-to-cart solutions in Australia. RCYCL partners with brands like THE ICONIC and Myer to offer donation, recycling and soon, repair, bags that sit directly in the online checkout, allowing customers to clear out their wardrobe guilt while adding margin for retailers. In this rapid-fire Checkout chat, we go behind the bold brand and get a glimpse at the tech stack and mindset driving Belinda’s impact-focused growth.
A QR Code, a Mars Bar and a Lesson in Customer Behaviour
When asked about something interesting she’s bought recently, Belinda’s answer started with a snack and ended in strategy. “I was at a friend’s place and the packaging said ‘scan this QR code for a free Mars Bar’. So I scanned it and my daughter received a Mars Bar the next day,” she recalled. “I thought this is pure validation that putting a QR code on freight bags is going to work.”
It was a small moment, but it had a big impact. The experience proved just how simple and effective a well-placed QR code could be in driving real-world action. If scanning a snack wrapper could result in a tangible reward delivered the next day, why couldn’t that same behaviour be applied to recycling or donating clothes?
That lightbulb moment helped cement Belinda’s belief that sustainable actions don’t need to feel hard or inconvenient, they just need to be easy, accessible and well-timed. It’s part of why QR codes are central to the RCYCL experience: removing friction from the process of recycling, donating and soon, repairing garments. By embedding a simple digital touchpoint into the physical unboxing experience, RCYCL nudges customers toward more sustainable behaviour, without asking them to go out of their way.
Betting on Bold Moves (and Bold Retailers)
When it comes to retailers doing the right thing and doing it well, Belinda is quick to call out THE ICONIC as a standout. “They’re talking to all the right people. They’ve got their finger on the pulse with trends, whether it be in fashion, in tech, in sustainability,” she said.
Belinda doesn’t just admire them from afar. RCYCL is live on THE ICONIC and the brand is a key partner in helping bring circular fashion to the mainstream. But what’s most telling is how committed Belinda is to building these partnerships. When she was offered a one-hour window to meet with THE ICONIC’s team, she didn’t blink, even when that “meeting” was scheduled during their internal Run Club.
“I don’t run,” she laughed. “But I said, sure, I’m in. I mentally just told myself, you’ve got one hour, make it count.” By the end of the jog, the Head of Partnerships was publicly backing her. “She literally turned to everyone and said, ‘This is Belinda from RCYCL, whatever department you’re in, we’re backing her.’” It’s a perfect example of how Belinda builds trust: not just through ideas, but by showing up. Literally.
The Tech That Keeps It All Moving
For a business like RCYCL, which is part ecommerce, part logistics, part impact, the tech stack needs to be flexible, scalable and user-friendly. For Belinda, Shopify is the non-negotiable foundation. “Shopify enables all these creatives to actually have a business,” she said. “It’s not just about launching a site, it’s the customisation, the integrations, the simplicity.”
She sees tech as an enabler, not just for the business, but for the customer experience too. Whether it’s embedding QR codes into packaging, automating repair workflows, or tracking donations and recycling volumes, every touchpoint needs to work seamlessly.
And as RCYCL expands into services like repairs, Belinda is leveraging API-based logistics, data capture, and inventory-style thinking to make it feel like just another product in the customer journey. “I wanted it to behave like a product in a retailer’s system, so it’s barcoded, margin-positive, and trackable,” she added. For ecommerce pros, it’s a reminder that your backend should support innovation, not slow it down.
Leaning on Real Voices for Real Insight
With so much of the sustainability space filled with buzzwords and tokenism, Belinda finds grounding in real conversations, especially those that go beyond surface-level success stories.
She’s a fan of Chief Meta Chicks, a podcast hosted by former Zenith Media CEO Nikki Gibson. “She’s taken all of her media knowledge and brought it into a community,” Belinda explained. “It’s about leaning in, being completely vulnerable in whatever part of the journey you’re on. And just backing each other with all of her expertise and network.”
That kind of open, real-world dialogue resonates strongly with Belinda, who’s built RCYCL on transparency. From explaining what happens to recycled materials to building trust with customers and retail partners, she knows that being upfront, and sometimes imperfect, is better than being glossy and vague. Storytelling doesn’t have to be polished to be powerful. It just needs to be honest.
The Challenge That Keeps Her Up at Night
Despite strong traction, big-name partnerships, and national PR attention, Belinda’s biggest challenge is still scale, and not the kind you might think. “My biggest challenge is brand awareness and distribution. Getting more retailers on board,” she said. “The concept works. The product works. But it’s about getting it in front of more people.”
She’s made RCYCL as retailer-friendly as possible. “It’s a stock item. It’s barcoded. You make margin on it. We’ll dropship it. You can track your impact. You can turn it into a marketing message,” she said.
But she knows that in large retail environments, decisions take time, sometimes years. “It took two years to get into THE ICONIC,” she shared. And while big partners are vital for visibility and credibility, Belinda is also expanding into plug-and-play solutions for small ecommerce retailers, making RCYCL accessible to brands that want to do the right thing but don’t have big budgets for custom sustainability programs.
She’s also exploring new channels like Retail Fest, industry events, and strategic podcast placements (like this one!) to help close the gap between awareness and action.
Make Sustainability Tangible, Not Just Trendy
Belinda’s Checkout conversation reinforces a key message for brand managers and ecommerce professionals: sustainability can’t just live in a mission statement. It has to show up in the shopping cart, in the post-purchase experience and in the day-to-day decisions customers are already making. By building a product that’s easy to adopt, margin-positive for retailers, and genuinely useful for customers, Belinda has created more than just a service, she’s built a behaviour shift.
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The Checkout is a short snippet of our conversations.
