Unsure what you should do with pens and markers, Styrofoam and snack bags?
There’s a new service for that.
Rabbit Recycling is a personalized recycling service for households and businesses in the Philadelphia area. Customers can throw all of their household items into one bucket. The service then acts as a middleman, picking up the buckets and sorting through each item at their facility. Rabbit Recycling hopes to make recycling as easy and convenient as possible, aiming to eliminate the guilt and angst of trying to recycle in a consumer-based society.
Since opening in early 2018, founder Bryan Siegfried opened it with his brother Matt and his friend Morgan Keller. From answering customer’s phone calls to sorting through recyclable items, they handle all operations behind the business. In an interview with Green Philly, Bryan describes their three-person team as a group “that wears a lot of hats,” like many entrepreneurs.
Rabbit Recycling answers calls from their regular customers ranging every two weeks to a month, picking up 20-60 gallons of recyclable items in a bucket. They recycle almost every item (that is made from rubbers, plastics, metals, and fabrics).
Rabbit Recycling hopes to reduce the waste going into landfills that can instead be recycled, reprocessed, or reused.
Rabbit Recycling separates themselves from the municipal system by picking up items at the customer’s convenience and ensuring that recyclables are cleaned and routed through the proper channels.
Siegfried stated, “You may be putting your bucket out along with everyone else, but what if your neighbor isn’t doing a good job?”
Siegfried researches the proper recycling channels for every item that they receive. If items can be reused, Rabbit Recycling donates to the Salvation Army and local thrift stores. The business recently built paper and plastic shredders, which they hope to use when converting plastic recyclables into the buckets that they give to customers.
Other major U.S. cities have yet to introduce personalized recycling programs, which make them ripe for opportunity. Siegfried claims that Rabbit Recycling gives a solution to the industry’s overwhelming problem with recycling.
“There needs to be a more compact way of handling recycling. Rural towns can handle it,” said Siegfried.
Imagining innovations like these are a possibility to reduce waste in landfills and can provide ethical recycling solutions for businesses.
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