The leaders of the Recycling Alliance of Philadelphia and its affiliate RecycleNow will be talking about a new grassroots political effort to bring the RecycleBank program to all of Philadelphia in the next few years.
RecycleBank is a brilliant program that has been a tremendous success in the two neighborhoods where it has been tested, Chestnut Hill and West Oak Lane. RecycleBank is a private enterprise that works with the Streets Department to collect a much wider range of recyclables than is collected by the city now. They all go into one big container that is provided to each household. Under RecycleBank, the same folks who now pick up your recycling will pick up and weight the container. And then households can claim coupons worth up to $400 per year, based upon the weight of all the material they recycle. The coupons are mostly for locally owned businesses.
In both test neighborhoods, the percentage of all material that is recycled has soared. Participation in recycling in Chestnut Hill jumped from 30 percent to over 90 percent. The average weight of household recycling increased from 10 pounds to 35 pounds per household. In West Oak Lane the participation rate also was over 90 percent and the average weight of recycled materials went from 3 pounds a week to almost 20 pounds.
(The data in the previous paragraph is taken from an excellent report on RecycleBank by David Biddle that was published in inBusiness.)
A study by former City Controller Jonathan Saidel suggested that the city could save $17 million per year by dramatically increasing the amount of recycling we do. In addition, jump starting the recycling industry in Philadelphia will provide new jobs.
RecycleBank is thus both an pro-environment and an economic development program.
Neighborhood Networks will be deciding whether to endorse and support this program at its next Steering Committee meeting. The event tonight will be a great introduction to this project.