Starting Feb. 1, the city of Hollywood, Fla., will start a recycling incentive program with RecycleBank.
Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober and members of the Hollywood City Commission joined RecycleBank representatives, city staff, residents and business owners at Sal Oliveri/Veterans Park to launch Hollywood’s new recycling program with RecycleBank.
RecycleBank services more than one million people across 24 states and in the United Kingdom.
Hollywood is the first city in Broward County to partner with RecycleBank, and is the largest city offering the rewards-for-recycling program in Florida. “Hollywood is leading the way in making Broward a greener, more sustainable county,” Mayor Bober says. “Partnering with RecycleBank is a way to protect our environment, help the local economy, keep our community clean and provide real savings to Hollywood households that recycle.”
This past month, close to 32,000 households received new 95 gallon recycling carts outfitted with special tags that connect the address with individual RecycleBank accounts and information on how to set-up their accounts. Recycling trucks will read the identification tags during recycling pick up and record the weight of recyclables. RecycleBank will convert that weight into points that can be used to “shop” for rewards from hundreds of businesses in more than 20 categories.
Greg Turek, director of Public Works for the city, expects the program to reduce Hollywood's waste disposal costs by close to $500,000 this year, by diverting tons of waste otherwise destined for landfills.
“It's less expensive for Hollywood to keep things out of the waste stream than to put things in,” says Turek, “Working together, the city and residents will save money and help save the planet at the same time.”
The new program also will result in a transition to single-stream recycling in the city.