I feel guilty that I don’t recycle as much as I would like. The truth is, I’m lazy about sorting, and I don’t have room in my kitchen to have separate bins for cans, paper, glass, etc. And, I always wonder, does the stuff in the bins really get recycled? I know that at my office, rumor has it, only the cans and bottles really get recycled because the staff is paid for recycling cans. However, the paper in the paper bins gets thrown in with the regular trash because the staff isn’t incentivized to recycle that. I know I’m being lazy, but really, why does recycling need to feel like work? Why can’t we get incentivized for recycling all things recyclable?
I think I just found the company that solves all those jobs: RecycleBank. It is one of the coolest green companies I’ve come across. RecycleBank introduces financial incentives and convenience (no sorting needed, curbside drop off) to the recycling process, offering new dimensions of performance that motivates everyone to recycle more.
RecycleBank has a winning customer value proposition to every participant in the value chain:
- RecycleBank provides financial incentives to households to recycle, which reduces the total tonnage of landfill-bound material
- Municipal officials save disposal fees
- Recycling companies make more money from processing
- Retailers gain positive association with an environmentally beneficial activity
- Partnering waste haulers can differentiate themselves in the competitive hauler market
How does this process work?
Households put unsorted recyclable materials into recycle bins for curbside pickup. The recyclables are weighed on the back of disposal trucks when they are picked up by the sanitation crew. Information is scanned and recorded through a computer chip embedded in the garbage bins and then is channeled from an on-board computer in the garbage trucks into a databank. Households collect points, which can used at more than 400 national retailers such as Starbucks, HomeDepot, neighborhood grocery stores, etc.
RecycleBank has formed partnership with diverse players in order to make its innovation process work. It has partnered with over 35 cities and municipalities, over 400 business sponsors, with technology providers, and with waste haulers.
How does RecycleBank make money?
RecycleBank has developed three diverse revenue streams. This first is from municipalities (or private haulers, depending on the agreement), who pay a fee per household involved. The second is from recycling plants, with the amount determined by how much it increases the amount of materials that are processed (see NYT's article). The third, and potentially the biggest, is advertising revenues from online website used by households to manage their “RecycleBank point” accounts. (Fortune, Sept 20, 2007)
What is RecycleBank’s disruptive impact…so far?
In the 3.5 years since RecycleBank was founded, it expanded its services to more than 35 municipalities the Northeast and is planning a national US rollout and an expansion to the UK. In its first 3 years of operation, RecycleBank has diverted more than 36 million tons of recyclables from landfills (see Press Release and Green VC article)
