In a classic episode from the television show Seinfeld entitled “The Merv Griffin Show� (1997), Kramer discovers the set from that old talk show in a dumpster and proceeds to reconstruct it in his apartment and then reenact the show there, with himself as host and his friends as guests. The moral, of sorts, therein is that one person’s trash is another’s treasure—or, conversely, amid the daily detritus of our earthly existence, there may occasionally be found something of value or import. From where I sit, perched before my PC (Portal of Communication), the news items and headlines that daily greet—and sometimes assault—my senses and sensibilities are akin to the aforementioned trash, not because they are necessarily absent of worth but more because they are often gritty, noxious, and nauseating. Fortunately, with modest frequency, I come across a shiny bit of news that is worth plucking from the rubbish and using herein. Today’s treasure is courtesy of Reuters, via the Environmental News Network, and appropriately enough concerns waste material:

Philadelphia Discovers It Pays to Recycle Trash

April 07, 2006 — By Jon Hurdle, Reuters

PHILADELPHIA — When you can’t get people to recycle trash by appealing to their environmental conscience, there’s a simple solution that seems to work: pay them.

That’s the strategy taken by RecycleBank, a pioneering Philadelphia-based nonprofit group that gives households coupons to spend at local businesses in return for separating their recyclables from the stuff that really needs to go in the landfill.

The result has been a dramatic increase in recycling rates, and that success has led to its expansion into New Jersey, Delaware and several New England states, and has prompted inquiries from Europe, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“This is the most exciting thing that’s come along for the last 15 or 20 years” in recycling, said Christine Knapp of the environmental advocacy group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future.

RecycleBank has been operating in two Philadelphia neighborhoods and some areas of suburban Philadelphia, covering about 5,000 homes, since January 2005, improving one of the nation’s worst recycling records.

The program attracts users by allowing people to accumulate all their glass, plastic, aluminum, cardboard and newspaper in just one container rather than requiring separate bins. The single recycle bin is emptied by the local trash hauler.

In Chestnut Hill, an upscale Philadelphia neighborhood, the proportion of recyclable waste actually being recycled has jumped to 50 percent from less than 10 percent since the program began, said Ron Gonen, co-founder of RecycleBank.

More than 90 percent of households in the pilot-program neighborhood now recycle, up from less than 25 percent at the beginning of 2005.

Participating households earn “RecycleBank Dollars” which are accumulated according to the weight of recycled trash.

The “dollars,” up to $400 a year per household, are donated by about 150 local businesses, which seek to generate goodwill with shoppers and entice them with discounts of 10 or 20 percent.

“It’s the most brilliant idea,” said Ellen Hass, a Chestnut Hill resident. “Fifty percent of everything is recycled because it can be recycled.” more…

RecycleBank appears to be generating a lot of positive attention for its innovative and effective approach to waste recycling. The company and its founders, Patrick Fitzgerald and Ron Gonen, were the subject of an article in the business section of the New York Times this past February, which lauded their “elegantly simple� approach (full text here). The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported favorably on the company, as well. I suppose that it is only a matter of time before Merv Griffin himself comes out of retirement to interview Fitzgerald and Gonen. What a treasure that would be—like RecycleBank itself.