WM makes investment in recycling reward program

Waste Management, Inc. has made a strategic investment in Recycle Rewards, Inc., whose subsidiary, Recyclebank®, rewards people for taking everyday green actions with discounts and deals from local and national businesses.

As part of the investment, Waste Management expects to provide access to Recyclebank’s green rewards program to its nearly 20 million North American customers over the next several years. In addition, Recyclebank will assume Waste Management’s Greenopolis social recycling platform, making Recyclebank the leading online recycling rewards program in America.

As part of the agreement, Recyclebank adds another recycling rewards offer to its members, acquiring Greenopolis’s social recycling program, which rewards consumers for recycling on the go by combining incentives with state-of-the-art collection and tracking technology.

Recyclebank’s rewards-for-recy-cling program is currently in more than 300 communities in the United States and the U.K. Greenopolis’s web-based rewards catalog will be incorporated into Recyclebank’s rewards program of more than 3,000 local and national businesses to offer even greater incentives to its member base.

Recyclebank will also assume management of the Greenopolis social media, including Greenopolis.com, RecyclePix and Oceanopolis, the Facebook game that uses social gaming to reward recycling in real life and the virtual world.

Waste Management joins existing Recyclebank investors RRE Ventures, Sigma Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, The Westly Group, Generation Investment Management, Top Tier Capital Partners, Physic Ventures and Craton Equity Partners.