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One of the green cornerstones of building a more sustainable Cherry Hill is reducing the Township’s waste and increasing the overall recycling rate. While Cherry Hill is currently the No. 1 recycler in Camden County, the goal is to become the No. 1 recycler in the state.

Last year, 950 homes in the Knollwood area of the township took part in a pilot for an innovative new program called RecycleBank. Mayor Bernie Platt and Town Council believed that if the six-month pilot was successful, it could be the key to significantly boosting Cherry Hill’s already healthy recycling tonnage. While everyone had high hopes for the program, the numbers were still astonishing – the recycling rate in Knollwood shot up more than 90 percent!

The reasons for the program’s success are obvious – it offers recyclers rewards and convenience. RecycleBank’s single-stream processing means there is no need to separate paper and cardboard from aluminum cans, glass and plastic. All recycled materials are placed in a cart equipped with a microchip that contains the homeowner's information, including a RecycleBank online account number. Collection trucks equipped with special computers scan the barcode, calculate the weight of the recycled material, store the information in a databank, then credit the home with “RecycleBank Dollars.” The amount of materials recycled is then converted into reward dollars that can be used at hundreds of local and national reward-partners, such as IKEA, Dick’s Sporting Goods, ShopRite and even Cherry Hill Pizza.

Platt and Town Council have declared RecycleBank an undeniable success. On average, pilot residents removed more than 10 additional pounds of trash per week from their waste stream, placing them in the municipal recycling stream instead. At a landmark Town Council meeting in March, the town-wide roll-out of RecycleBank was approved as part of an aggressive 10-point Green Action Plan.

In 2007, Cherry Hill spent $1.7 million on landfill fees and we will see another cost increase for solid waste disposal this year. With RecycleBank, a significant amount of recycleable material is now steering clear of the solid waste stream and not costing taxpayers money for disposal. Additionally, Cherry Hill makes more rebate money from commodities that can be reused like paper, cardboard and glass bottles.

Although the savings and positive environmental impact are great assets to this program, the one compliment Town Hall keep’s hearing from Knollwood residents is the convenience factor of RecycleBank. They allow you to put all of your recycleable material into one, wheeled, closed can. They use a “single-stream” system that allows residents to mix their bottles, newspapers, plastics, and cardboard together. Also these new containers are mechanically picked up by truck with an automated arm.

The new containers, combined with the automated pickup, make for cleaner streets, even on the windiest days of the year, and that means cleaner neighborhoods throughout Cherry Hill. You won’t have to worry about newspapers flying down the street or bottles falling out of the can when it gets manually dumped into the truck.

Reducing our collective carbon footprint by diverting significant amounts of waste from landfills is one of the avenues we must travel on the path to sustainability. Our partnership with RecycleBank is making that journey a lot easier.

The Township will start delivering new RecycleBank containers to over 20,000 Cherry Hill homes on June 2. The week of June 30, will mark the first week of regular pickup with those new cans.

For more information on RecycleBank, visit the company’s Web site at www.RecycleBank.com and for more information on the RecycleBank rollout call the Mayor’s office at (856) 488-7878.