I don’t know about you, but I try to recycle when its convenient. Like the time my college roommates threw a huge party and I stole all of the empty cans and returned them for the nickel deposits. It was easy money. But I must also admit that I’ve thrown away plenty of recyclables when there wasn’t a proper receptacle for them. Environmentalism is great; however, people respond to incentives, and a healthy Earth a century down the road isn’t much of an incentive for the average person. People need a push, and that’s exactly what RecycleBank does. They’re a New York, NY based company that rewards people for “taking positive green actions.” By doing things like recycling at home, you can earn RecycleBank points. Those points can be redeemed for rewards ranging from Amazon Gift Cards to museum memberships, with lots and lots of other options in between—you can even donate your points.

Take It to the RecycleBank

Now, RecycleBank doesn’t make it all that clear how their business works—even their How It Works page doesn’t do a great job of describing the basic idea. From what I’ve gathered, RecycleBank is all about partnerships. They start with municipalities and haulers, since they’re the ones in charge of local recycling programs. This way you can keep bring your recyclables to the curbside like normal, but RecycleBank works with haulers to record exactly how much you are recycling (and you don’t need to sort your recyclables). The next set of partnerships is with Material Recycling Facilities that end up processing all of the recyclables that go through the RecycleBank program. Then come the advertisers (both local and national)—these are the companies that supply the rewards. They get new market exposure to environmentally conscious consumers in return for providing rewards for RecylceBank members. That’s the only cost. Finally, there’s you, the end user and recycler. If you sign up, you can earn 2.5 points per pound of recyclable material up to an annual cap of 5,400 points per year. It’s hard to find out what those points are actually worth without signing up, but I’m sure you can get some pretty good stuff.

If you’re excited about the nexus of marketing and recycling, then you should check out jobs at RecycleBank. They have quite a few positions open, though most of them require a decent amount of experience. The Outreach Specialist is probably the best fit for a new or recent grad (and they say they want 3 years of experience). There are also some Software Development positions available, but those also seem targeted towards more experience hires. The best option is to reach out to them without applying to a specific position. You can e-mail jobs@recyclebank.com and tell them what you think that you can add to their team. It can’t hurt—they’ve had a lot of interns in the past, (in Community Outreach, Finance, Social Media, and Design) so they certainly value young talent.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• RecycleBank.com
• Corporate.RecycleBank.com
• Jobs at RecycleBank
• About RecycleBank
• RecycleBank’s Team
• RecycleBank’s Sustainability Report

Do you recycle?

We've identified RecycleBank as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• advertising
• all employers
• business development
• design
• environmental
• finance
• green
• local
• local marketing
• marketing
• New York
• outreach
• recycling
• sales
• social media
• software development
• sustainability

---

Jobs Near You

---