RecycleBank

This case study is about a brand new recycling model called RecycleBank. Prior to Wilmington's citywide rollout, RecycleBank piloted its program in two distinct neighborhoods of Philadelphia, in order to test its plan. The first stage of the pilot was for 1,200 residents in Chestnut Hill, a relatively fancy, upper-middle class neighborhood of Philadelphia. RecycleBank successfully tripled participation rates from 30 to 90 percent in a matter of months. The second area of the pilot was in West Oak Lane, a lower to middle class area, which quadrupled participation rates to 90 percent (West Oak Lane had a lower initial participation rate). These successes helped establish RecycleBank's potential, with experience to back its ideas.
According to Scott Lamb, Senior Vice President of RecycleBank, three powerful strategies have led to the company's success in curbing waste disposal habits. First, the collection carts are large (often 64- or 96-gallon), allowing for more capacity than a normal recycling bin to avoid overflow that ends up in the trash. Second, it provides a single stream recycling environment, allowing everything to be placed in one container, which couldn't be any easier. Last, and perhaps most important, are the financial incentives, which make recycling more than just an environmentally friendly action.
Each cart has a radio frequency identification tag (RFID); the cart is weighed on the collection truck, and the RFID tag associates that weight with the individual household. The more a resident recycles, the more rewards or credits they receive, which can then be redeemed at over 300 local and national retail partners (a number that rapidly increases), for recreational pleasures (like movie tickets and lattés), as well as for basic staples (at grocery stores). RecycleBank has a single source vendor that provides McNelius equipment, and subcontracted with Avery Weigh-Tronix, which developed equipment for the scale, RFID reading, data collection and the communication and control box.
On the materials recovery side, single stream requires expensive and sophisticated machinery at the recycling plant, capable of sorting the mixture effectively and efficiently. Blue Mountain has made these investments, but reports that occasionally there are problems, such as with paper fiber - the increasing public obsession with identity protection has led to more shredding of documents, which are difficult to separate from glass. Because RecycleBank strives to break down barriers and rules that will restrict people from recycling, single stream collection remains the best option, with or without shredded paper. The company's primary objective is to dramatically increase household recycling, reducing the human footprint by diverting recyclables from the landfill.