Starting April 5th, 15,000 single-family homes in Los Angeles will be able to earn cash for their trash through the city’s new RecycleBank program. Participating households simply sign up to have their recycling bins outfitted with special ID tags. These bins will then be weighed each time they are collected, and the weight of the recycled goods translates into points which can then be redeemed at a variety of local retailers. There are currently over 1,000 stores that have partnered with RecycleBank, so it sounds like a pretty great deal.
According to statistics, Los Angeles residences already reduce, reuse or recycle about 65% of their waste — that’s more than any other of the US’s 10 largest cities. In order to continue to motivate residents to make LA a leading green city, Mayor Antonio Villraigosa announced the LA RecycleBank Program starting with a handful of homes in the West Valley and North Central regions of LA.
If all goes well, plans are in place to roll out the program to an additional 745,000 single-family and small-apartment households as early as April 2011.
Via LA Times
we wuold like to join and establish such proggrammes in africa what can we do?
I live in LA and had a very hard time tracking down this program. It is offered only in certain areas of the Valley. Here’s the link: http://www.lacitysan.org/solid_resources/recycling/curbside/RecyclingRewardsPilotProg.htm