RecycleBank is a rewards company with offices in New York City and Philadelphia focused on recycling rewards. It does this by measuring the amount of material each home recycles then issuing RecycleBank Points based on the amount of materials recycled. These points can be used at participating local and national rewards partners. These partners include Regal Entertainment Group, Green Mountain Coffee, CVS Caremark Corporation, Whole Foods Market, Starbucks and ActiveCause. RRE Ventures and Sigma Partners are the largest institutional shareholder group and Ron Gonen, the co-founder and CEO is the largest individual shareholder.
RecycleBank is a member company of Ceres, a network nationwide of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.
RecycleBank was founded in 2004 by Patrick K. FitzGerald and Ron Gonen and a pilot program was launched in two Philadelphia neighborhoods. Currently the RecycleBank program services communities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont.
As of December 2007, RecycleBank is in 125,000 households in the United States in over 35 municipalities.
The process seems elegantly simple. Households get credit for the weight of materials they recycle, which is scanned and recorded through a computer chip embedded in the garbage bins when they are picked up by the sanitation crew. They exchange that credit for coupons at various businesses. Municipal officials save disposal fees. Recycling companies make more money from processing. Retailers gain the feel-good association with a socially beneficial activity.
RecycleBank charges municipalities (or private haulers, depending on the arrangement) $24 a household, and guarantees clients that they will save at least that much in disposal fees as waste is diverted from landfills and incinerators. The company also receives revenue from recycling plants, depending on how much it increases the amount of materials that are processed.
“I thought the idea had tremendous merit right from the start,” said Clifford J. Schorer Jr., who helped mentor Mr. Gonen in his position as entrepreneur in residence at the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia. The university contributed $100,000 to RecycleBank’s seed money.
Residents participating in RecycleBank can check their “balance” online and cash in their coupons — a maximum of $25 a month, $400 a year — at several dozen national chains like Starbucks, Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond. The Coca-Cola Company set up a Green Community Fund, where coupons can be donated to environmental education programs in the Philadelphia public schools and public libraries.
During its start in Philadelphia, RecycleBank also established relationships with local businesses like the Chestnut Hill Cheese Shop and the Reading Terminal Market, where about 25 specialty vendors accept the coupons.
One problem for the RecycleBank was trying to find a way to measure the volume of recyclable goods generated by a household and credit that amount to participants. Through Web searches and phone calls, the men identified Cascade Engineering in Grand Rapids, Mich., which provided free several thousand 35- and 64-gallon bins embedded with RFID (radio frequency identification) technology as part of its research and development budget.
The “smart waste” tag, a combination computer chip and bar code, enables the bins to be scanned and weighed and the amount linked to a household. The information is channeled from an on-board computer in the garbage trucks into a databank.
The LTS Scale Corporation of Twinsburg, Ohio, was able to configure scales and a tipping mechanism for the containers, which fit on the back of the trucks so the bins can be weighed and easily emptied.
Why not cheat by adding a bowling ball or other heavy nonrecyclable items to the trash?. RecycleBank came up with a button on the on-board computer that workers can press to flag the address if they notice contraband. This happens “less than rarely,” Mr. FitzGerald said.
Both men, who are 30 years old, decided early on that it was important to spare households the tedium of separating glass, paper, plastic and metal. They signed on with the Philadelphia-based Blue Mountain Recycling, which uses sorting technology employing fans, gravity, magnets and manual picking.
The Recycle Bank is fast becoming a smart idea that is being put to use in many areas of the country. Everyone it seems has jumped on the “Go Green” bandwagon and so many are coming up with ingenious ideas to encourage the majority to “think” green. RecycleBank’s Ron Gonen cofounder and CEO and largest shareholder has come up with the idea of getting compensated by recycling.
Nelson
www.yourclickmarket.wordpress.com
