Check out Forbes, a leading source for reliable business news and financial information, for a story featuring Mayor Bill Finch and the City's recycling efforts. See excerpt below:
For an illustration of how Recyclebank works, consider the city of Bridgeport in Connecticut. In August 2013, Mayor Bill Finch reported that the city’s recycling participation rate rose 67 percent (compared with the previous two-year period), because of a switch that the municipality made to adopt single-stream recycling (no sorting needed) and to simultaneously expand the Recyclebank rewards it offers for participating.
Connecticut uses a closed-loop waste management system: it costs $70 per ton for Bridgeport (and other cities that are part of a regional associations) to have waste hauled away to landfills. Conversely, the city is paid about $20 for every ton of stuff that is collects for recycling purposes, Finch estimates. “This is a profound swing,” he noted.
And it adds up. Since September 2011, Bridgeport has avoided about $130,000 in tipping fees and earned about $100,000 from this new revenue source.
“People in the community feel good, the finances are evident, and the environmental impact is that recycling helps eliminate new materials extraction,” Finch said.
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