September 29th, 2008 · No Comments

The company launched in 2004 with the help of $100,000 in seed capital from Columbia University’s Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship. Now it serves the university and its students directly through its RecycleBank Kiosk pilot program there.

“It is so rewarding for us to be able to service a pilot like this at the school where the genesis of RecycleBank began,” says David Wigder, the company’s VP of business development. “It is a great way for students to learn about environmental issues and take action that makes a real impact.

“RecycleBank’s goal is to reward individual recycling efforts. In places like dorms, where this is typically more difficult, a kiosk allows individuals to weigh their recycling and get rewarded for their own efforts.”

RecycleBank has been met with enthusiasm from communities, haulers, households, investors, and municipalities and expects to roll out its kiosk program throughout 2009. It is reluctant, however, to move too quickly without having ironed out all the details.

“There is a lot of interest in our kiosk program from universities and multi-unit dwellings like apartments and condominiums,” says Wigder. “We are currently in the pilot stage and learning a lot from the experience. While we are not quite ready to roll out in scale, this would certainly be our greatest joy and assist us in the mission to dramatically increase household recycling rates, no matter what the ‘house’ looks like.”

Wigder sees turning the student population onto recycling as a ground-floor opportunity to develop budding environmentalists.

“We have received very positive feedback from students during our first pilot phase last spring,” he says. “In measuring their recycling behavior, it is astonishing how much recyclable material students can accumulate in their dorm rooms!”

As a facet of the program, the heavier the recycled material, the more rewards are earned. So what encourages curbside and kiosk participants to take the high road and not be tempted to add a 160 lb. Weider weight set to the cart or scale?

For curbside participants, RecycleBank has added a button to its on-board computer that recycle haulers press to flag the address if they notice any hanky-panky.

At Columbia University, RecycleBank has added different checks and balances to reduce the desire to manipulate the system.

“Certainly, in a self-service model, users have the possibility to cheat,” says Wigder. “But, we find that cheating is not that common both in our curbside program and in this kiosk model. People inherently want to do the right thing and adding incentives tends to nudge behaviors in the right direction. Just in case, we put a cap on how many points someone can earn per month. We also have a camera for security mounted on some of the kiosks.”

The company boasts that the “kiosk is where responsibility and innovation meet sustainability and rewards.”

As RecycleBank increases the scale of its organization to support its nationwide rollout effort, the company is launching its Points in the Right Direction loyalty platform, a more robust program, it says, that rewards a green lifestyle, rather than just the act of recycling.

It’s also looking to set up an office in Canada to reach recyclers there. With 1 million households under contract as a goal in 2008, RecycleBank has set its sights on having signed on 2 million additional households each year through 2010 to reach the goal of 5 million total households under contract that year. That’s a lot of curb and kiosk real estate.

(Photo credit: Recycle Bank)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

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