Pay Dirt
April 16, 2008
There used to be a time when the phrase ‘Pay Dirt’ referred to prospecting for gold, after all that is where the expression comes from. TVBL Biz Watch however has identified a new business model in the recycling business that gives new meaning to the idea of being paid for your refuse or ‘dirt’ in this case.
Despite the fact that environmentalists have been pushing recycling for years now in the US, recycling rates remain quite low. Many people who start the week dividing their refuse, often end up mixing bottles and newsprint by the end of the week as the trash mounts.
A company named Recyclebank has decided to stop depending solely on our desire to recycle by incentivizing it and thereby making it financially worth our while to recycle. They have done this by issuing a special container to each family on their garbage routes. When the garbage company pick up the garbage it weighs and records the total mount that each family has recycled. Households are awarded recyclebank points that can then be redeemed for merchandise at local merchants and pharmacies.
Since it’s launch in Philadelphia in 2006, recycling rates in the neighbourhoods where it has been introduced have risen from 7% to 90%. The key to Recyclebank’s success isn’t just down to economic incentive. Tracking families’ recycling not only provides them with a measure of the contribution they are making towards helping the earth, but also with a sense of accomplishment.
In this case, incentivizing proved extremely beneficial. However, some may argue that in some respects this incentivizing of behaviour is not altogether a new idea . Consider this: Residents of London pay discounted rates for their parking tickets if they pay them right away, which helps reduce administrative costs. Could incentivizing be deemed as a ‘political cloak’ for seemingly in our ‘best interest’ strategies?
By Gordon Bennett
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