9/20/2007

Philadelphia, PA - RecycleBank, a rewards program that motivates people to recycle, announced recently that it has completed its city-wide rollout of service to Wilmington, Del. and the city has already experienced a vast improvement in recycling rates. Wilmington chose the RecycleBank program as a solution to the rising cost of landfill fees and to remedy the city’s lack of curb-side recycling.

RecycleBank is able to motivate households and communities to recycle by providing them with the tools to quickly and easily measure the amount of material each home recycles. The amount of material recycled is then converted into RecycleBank Points that can be used like currency at hundreds of local and national RecycleBank Reward Partners.

Wilmington and RecycleBank began their relationship with a six-month pilot program that serviced 6,000 homes in six different neighborhoods of the city. The program was proven extremely successful when participating households produced more than two million pounds of recycling that would normally be sent to the landfill. This saved the city more than $60,000 on landfill tipping fees. A city-wide rollout was the next logical step for Wilmington.

The Wilmington city-wide rollout of the RecycleBank program is a tremendous achievement and serves as an example of how powerful it is to combine a successful, proven program that is able to motivate households to recycle and citizens’ participation.

“The RecycleBank program helped Wilmington become an even more environmentally friendly city by providing an easy and proven recycling plan,” said James Baker, mayor of Wilmington. “The program also helps to motivate and educate our citizens on the benefits and rewards that everyone can reap from recycling.”

The RecycleBank program rewards households for their recycling efforts by providing them with incentives that can be redeemed with national RecycleBank Reward Partners like Coca-Cola, IKEA, Starbucks and Whole Foods. Incentives can also be redeemed with local reward partners like grocery stores or even for items such as Wilmington Blue Rocks tickets or discounts at Happy Harry’s.

“Wilmington is proof that when households, cities, and businesses team up with a program like RecycleBank, everyone wins,” said Ron Gonen, CEO of RecycleBank. “RecycleBank is excited about its long-term partnership with Wilmington. Our team is proud to have the opportunity to work with a city that has such a focused dedication to sustainability and quality of life.”

RecycleBank now operates in more than 50,000 homes in southern New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania and will be launching service to an additional 40,000 homes in upstate New York, Vermont and Massachusetts this year. RecycleBank plans to be in 100,000 homes by the end of 2007 and nationwide by 2009. If all 50,000 RecycleBank households recently participated weekly for one year, they will have recycled 64 million pounds of garbage – and consequently eliminated this amount of waste from landfills annually.

SOURCE: RecycleBank