Recyclebank Partners with North Miami

The city of North Miami, Fla., is partnering with Recyclebank to bolster its recycling.

The program will be available to all single-family homes in North Miami that have curbside recycling service. Recyclebank will distribute reward points to local residents based on the community’s recycling weight, according to a news release.

It is the second round of a partnership between the city of about 60,000 and New York-based Recyclebank, the rewards program that provides residents points for their recycling actions. North Miami was the first community in the Southeast United States to deploy the Recyclebank program, in 2009.

North Miami households that receive curbside recycling service must activate or re-activate an existing account, either online or by phone, in order to start earning reward points. Recyclebank also is encouraging businesses interested in being a reward partner to provide discounts and rewards to local residents to contact the company.

In addition, Recyclebank operates a program in communities that it serves for schools to submit an application that creates, continues or expands sustainable practices. Recyclebank selects the top 50 proposals and gives those accepted schools the chance to raise up to $2,500 for their projects.

 Recyclebank, operating for more than 10 years, partners with communities and a variety of brands. It claims more than 4 million members.

In addition to its core recycling incentives program, Recyclebank recently has been addressing one of the recycling industry’s biggest current problems–contamination of collected material. The company has launched a monthly educational initiative offering an array of content on contamination to its users, which are municipal residents located in 350 communities in the United States. The material talks about issues such as explaining recycling contamination and how to prevent it. 

But its core business remains working with municipalities. One of its charter cities, Philadelphia, recycled a record 128,000 tons of material during its fiscal 2014, and has posted a 155-percent increase in recycling since 2008, in part with Recyclebank’s help.

Meanwhile, another incentive firm, Tomra Systems ASA, expanded this month its Greenbean bottle and can recycling incentive program for U.S. colleges and universities. The provider of reverse vending machines (RVMs), based in Asker, Norway, added Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to its program, which previously included seven institutions in the Northeast and Midwest.