This New Recycling App Wants to Change the Global Plastics Game One Community at a Time

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.

Young people on the east side of Erie, Pennsylvania – a chronically depressed area in this small post-industrial city along Lake Erie, where pollution and trash dumping have taken a heavy toll – will have the chance to earn money while promoting environmental awareness under a novel project scheduled for this spring.

newBin is an app for mobile devices that will allow homeowners to schedule the pickup of bags of recyclables – without sorting, and free of charge – by independent contractors from their own neighborhoods. The app is being developed by newBin Corp., a sister company of International Recycling Group, which is implementing plans to build a new plastics recycling plant in Erie. 

newBin, which is raising funding for the project via a crowdfunding campaign on the StartEngine platform, prides itself on putting solutions into the hands of the communities committed to change. Homeowners will receive savings at local retail outlets and other rewards for their efforts, while young people collecting recyclables will secure much-needed employment. Think of it like a door-to-door service app like Uber Technologies Inc UBER or Doordash DASH; only the service is entirely free to users. 

The newBin team has begun connecting to community organizations like Urban Erie Community Development Corporation to partner on pilot projects beginning in May 2022.

UECDC is a nonprofit community center conducting culturally responsive, neighborhood-based educational and economic development programs on Erie’s east side. UECDC conducted a youth employment program in the summer of 2021, hiring  50 young people for six weeks. The students were mentored on job skills and the importance of education to their future. They cut grass on vacant lots and cleaned up more than 100 bags of trash in nearby neighborhoods, situated in the census tract with the second lowest median income in the city.  

“People struggling economically want a clean neighborhood just as much as anybody else,” said Gary Horton, who has headed UECDC for more than 20 years. However, he notes that the city recently voted to raise household waste collection rates to every resident this year without regard to income, while the amount of recycling material the city’s hauler will accept has been declining. “This is a problem. When you feel you have no say in when, how or what kind of trash is collected in your neighborhood, it just  feeds into the sense that nobody cares about your community.” 

As head of the Erie chapter of the NAACP, who has long fought for social and environmental justice on behalf of this community, Horton has battled to redress some of the worst industrial pollution any community has been forced to endure. Horton said his own research showed him that residents have good intentions about recycling, but the rules for what could and couldn’t be recycled were confusing and caused residents to give up. 

“Communities like Erie can take control of all aspects of their environmental rights,” said IRG founder and chairman Mitch Hecht. “Everyone is frustrated at poor recycling 

rates and rising waste collection fees. With newBin, we have the technology and the grassroots motivation to change the system in the communities that need it most.” 

Horton said he was introduced to the newBin concept at a meeting with Hecht and others last fall. The entrepreneurial opportunity presented in the pilot is already generating interest from local young people, including his nephews Aaron and Kennedy. 

“Mitch was telling us technology was going to revolutionize recycling, but we saw it  more as a way to change the community.” Horton said. “We can educate the community to recycle, and people in the community can also make money by becoming part of the solution as independent contractors. And critically, young people who are busy and working are much less likely to get involved in violence.” 

Environmental justice is a driving factor in the democratization of recycling. For over a century, the now-demolished Hammermill Paper Co. plant on the shore of Lake Erie would dump industrial waste directly into the lake, which not only provides the city with drinking water but also is popular for recreation. 

“It was so bad, the dead fish would float their way onto our beaches where our kids would be swimming,” said Horton. 

Another lakeside polluter, Erie Coke Co., was shut down by the state Department of Environmental Protection in 2019 after multiple citations, fines and sanctions were ignored.

“We have some of the highest cancer rates in the country due to environmental degradation,” Horton said. “I want our children to have a better future.” 

This month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized America’s first national recycling strategy to support the agency’s goal of achieving a 50 percent recycling rate by the end of the decade. Right now, according to EPA estimates, 90% of all plastics that enter the municipal solid waste stream are not recycled – this sad statistic is getting worse as municipal recycling programs are being cut as waste haulers push further into cheaper landfill solutions. 

“newBin is hitting at that exact and seemingly magical time when the market meets the moment,” said Mitch Hecht, founder and Chairman, newBin. “The moment is right for communities like Erie to take control of their environmental rights and is right for our planet as the private sector and people support revolutionary technologies to tackle  the climate crisis.”  

Information on an investment in the newBin project can be found at startengine.com/newbin.  

For information about UECDC, go to uecdc.org. 

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. Benzinga may receive monetary compensation from the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. This is a paid ad. Please see 17b disclosure linked in the campaign page for more information.

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.

Image by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash