People are already charged for their garbage -- you pay the garbage companies to come get your trash don't you?
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Saving the World for a Latte
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Gonen, 33, remains undaunted by the lack of conservation culture in the center of the country. His company's appeal has never been solely about doing the right thing. It's a pocketbook play: Households get 2.5 points for every pound they recycle and can earn a maximum of 450 points a month. Each point is worth a dime, so the monthly max is $45. You can redeem those points for a Latte at Dunkin' Donuts or to cut your grocery bill. "I don't think culturally it's a tough sell," says Gonen. "Our customer is anyone who lives in a home and buys stuff. Anyone I've met in the Midwest lives in a home and is a consumer."
RecycleBank makes its money from fees paid by its retail partners for online advertising and other marketing support. It also can make millions splitting the savings cities realize from diverting trash from the dump to "materials recovery facilities" that sort it, crush it and ship it out for reuse. Take Everett, which pays $76 for every ton of garbage it tips into landfills. Since RecycleBank arrived, garbage trucks are picking up 14 tons of recycling a day, instead of 3 tons. That's 11 tons of trash no longer going to the dump daily. RecycleBank also is compiling a vast database of green consumers it can sell to marketers; the company hopes to service 10 million homes within five years. "RecycleBank doesn't run the trucks," says Scott Vitters, a recycling exec at Coke, which has invested $2 million. "They are a marketing tool."
Green as it is, RecycleBank is still running in the red. SEC documents from RecycleBank's only publicly traded investor, Casella Waste Systems, indicate the company lost about $2.5 million in the three months ended July 31, suggesting an annual burn rate of $10 million. RecycleBank says those numbers are outdated, and Gonen promises profits by the first quarter of 2010. That's just fine with his investors. "If we wanted it to be a smaller, more profitable company, we could do that right now," says Stuart Ellman of RRE Ventures. "We'd rather build out the company and lose some money early on."
To RecycleBank customers, the goal is to build up the points as quickly as possible. Sure, some have tried gaming the system, hiding bowling balls in the bottom of the bin, but many are simply confused about what you can toss. The waste haulers are trained to spot "contaminated loads" and can reject them by pushing a red button on the truck, which automatically generates a letter to that home on what can be recycled. On Winslow Street, the workers reject a container weighed down with wood. As they head off, the elderly homeowner comes hobbling after them on a cane. "Wood is not recyclable?" he asks. Told it's not, he scurries back, removes the wood and wheels his bin back to the truck to be weighed and dumped. And most important, so he can earn his points. After all, saving the planet is fine. But saving a buck is even better.
© 2008
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