When it comes to inspiring action, we like to take a page out of Isaac Newton’s playbook. Sure, Recyclebank wasn’t around when he wrote that “an object at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force,” but we’d like to think that we’re living, breathing proof of that First Law of Motion. We encourage small, everyday actions by teaching you how they can benefit the environment, and we reward you for making the effort. By working with municipalities and waste haulers, we’ve already inspired our members to spare billions of pounds of waste from the landfill.

Recyclebank started in 2004 with a simple idea from Ron Gonen and Patrick Fitzgerald: could incentives get people to recycle more?

With waste disposal being one of the largest economic and environmental issues of our time, the simple act of recycling is one of the easiest and most impactful activities an individual can do. Within only a decades time, the organization has helped recycle more than 5.8 billion pounds of material!

Aside from just impacting the recycling industry, the company is actively involved in the communities in which it operates.

One of their most praiseworthy best practices is their Green Schools Program that awards environmental project grants to schools in Recyclebank communities across the U.S. Students and teachers brainstorm how they might better use local resources to improve their daily lives and lessen their environmental impact and apply for grants to help fund their ideas.

Recyclebank has donated upwards of $450,000 to more than 150 schools across the country.