RecycleBank Pays You To Recycle! Save Money While Saving The Environment!
January 28, 2007
A company called RecycleBank will give you credit (RecycleBank Dollars) at participating vendor stores when you recycle paper, plastic, glass, tin, and aluminum.
Once you sign up with RecycleBank you place your recyclable items in a bar-coded recycling container that is read when the truck picks up the “trash”. Each item earns a certain number of RecycleBank Dollars that accumulate in your web-accessible account. You can use the RecycleBank Dollars to save money at participating stores, the ones below caught my eye:
- Starbucks
- ProFlowers
- Staples
- PETCO
- Target
- Bed Bath & Beyond
- Dicks Sporting Goods
- RiteAid
- Whole Foods
- Timberland
I called to sign up but discovered it’s only offered in the Northeast part of the country. Apparently landfills are a big problem in that area because there is just no space left to store the junk! The customer service lady said that the farther you go west, the more available space there is for landfills so the cost of disposal goes down and along with it the financial incentive for business and governemnt to participate.
She did let me know that I could keep track of RecycleBank developments with their newsletter.
All posts by Ben Edwards
Sun, I guess my explanation wasn’t very good. The way I understand it, the truck comes to your home to pick up the recycling so you don’t have to lug it around in your car.
I agree, the cost of equipping the trucks with the technology to track this is high. That’s why we’re only seeing it in areas where waste disposal has a large price tag for corporations/government. It’s so expensive to put trash in landfills that they can justify the cost of the recycling program. I imagine there may be some type of tax benefit for companies that participate.
This is interesting, but I don’t know if people are willing to take a big container in their car and drop it off at a participating location for a few bucks. If they really want to encourage people to recycle (and pay them to do so), it’s probably a good idea to collect the recyclables instead of asking people to drop them off. But that’s not feasible for small scale operations as the cost is probably too high.
I am living in NJ which is part of NE, but I couldn’t find if NJ is included in their list.