Allied Waste partners with RecycleBank

Allied Waste Industries, Inc. and RecycleBank have announced a partnership to launch a nationwide recycling incentive program.

This partnership has the potential to bring together Allied Waste’s seven million residential customers with RecycleBank’s incentive program that enables households to earn rewards in the form of RecycleBank points for recycling. Households can redeem RecycleBank Points for gift cards, gift certificates and discounts to more than 400 national and local retailers across the country.

Participating retailers include Bed Bath & Beyond, Coca-Cola, CVS/pharmacy, Dunkin’ Donuts, Evian, IKEA, Kraft Foods, Target.com and Whole Foods, among others. Participants can also convert their rewards into donations for select charitable organizations. To date, over 100 million points have been awarded.

Currently, only consumers within nine Northeastern and Midwestern states have access to the RecycleBank program. Yet Allied Waste’s national footprint will allow for potentially millions of additional residents from around the country to benefit.

By the end of 2009, Allied Waste and RecycleBank hope to add at least one million new residential customers to the program. Doing so could translate into an additional 800 million pounds of garbage being diverted away from landfills and into recycling centers every year. Plans include customization for commercial and industrial customers in the near future.

Participation in the program is simple. Customers are assigned an RFID (radio frequency identification) that is imbedded in their RecycleBank cart, in which they are encouraged to recycle all paper, plastics and metal — with no sorting necessary. In each community, Allied Waste picks up and weighs the recyclables collected. RecycleBank Points are then awarded to the community for each pound of recyclable materials, with the total amount evenly divided among all participating customers.

The Allied Waste-RecycleBank partnership will be launched in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul. It is expected that the program will expand to the remaining markets across the country during early 2009.