The new bank in town

It’s called the Recycle Bank.

Now let me first tell you that I cut out coupons. I will never be able to live down the one morning when I missed the bus to my downtown job at the time because I was going through my coupons. See...I needed to make a run to Target that day, and I decided to quick check my coupons to see if I could use any. But as I began sifting through them, I discovered many had expired. So my OCD kicked in, and I had to go through the entire stack of coupons, ridding it of any expired coupons before I could walk away. Unfortunately, my bus stop that morning also expired. So, ironically, I ended up having to spend extra money to drive and park downtown that day. Thanks a lot, coupons! (mom thinks this is the funniest thing ever, but only because she knows she’s the exact same way...and it ain’t right!)

It’s like a game to see just how much money I can save with coupons. You can’t be sucked in by some coupons because they’re for the more expensive brands, and you’ll actually spend more money if you use the coupon (as opposed to buying the cheaper generic brand without a coupon). Anyways, I recently saved $6 during a Wal-Mart run and $7 at a Cub run. So...hey...that’s $13 which is...well, $13 dollars! I’m really thankful the receipts tell you how much you save, otherwise, I’d waste some time calculating it out myself.

But anyways, RecycleBank. It’s the new thing in town in good ole’ MG. In the past, if you wanted to recycle where I live, you had to sort your recyclable items and then place them in a plastic blue bin and place this bin out every Wednesday morning. As a good citizen, this I did. Well, now, we no longer have this bin, but a fancy-schmancy gray and blue covered bin that’s actually larger than my garbage bin. No need to sort our items anymore. Now, we just throw everything in that one bin and put it out every other Wednesday. The first few weeks have been a little rough. Confused neighbors—is this still the old-bin week? The new-bin week? Can the old bin actually be recycled in the new bin? Is this the start of the every-other week schedule? I’m guessing we actually made the recyclers second-guess themselves as they drove through our neighborhood and saw something different at the end of every driveway: wait, are we doing this right? But I think we got it now.

I haven’t told you the best part though. I set up an online account through RecylceBank; they weigh your recyclables; and then you get money based on the weight. So every other week I get an update emailed to me about how much my recycling weighed and how much money I made. So, today, I got an email. Instead of “You’ve got Mail!” it said, “You’ve got Points!” I received 85 redeemable points.

Now, humorously, I’ve started to wonder how one can make the most of this. I mean, after all, there’s something a little unfair to the single female who doesn’t go through 10 gallons of milk every two weeks or drink lots and lots of beer/pop for tons of cans. Clearly, the family of five has the advantage in this case. So, I started wondering if I could bring home some recyclable items from the office to throw in my bin. Or perhaps, my neighbor wouldn’t mind if I took one or two of their spaghetti jars (although they do weigh a bit more, but I mean, there's two of them and only one of me!). And now, when I go to the grocery store, I’m going to purposely buy food items packaged in glass that can be recycled, just so I can get a few more RecycleBank points. Next time I go to mom and dad’s, I could pretend like I didn’t get the Sunday paper that week for some reason. Could I take theirs? Cha-ching! At least 8 more points!!

When will I make my first withdrawal from this bank I wonder? And what will I buy? I should see what I got some coupons for.