You’ve probably noticed the cubic white bins on porches around the neighborhood. If you’ve wondered what they are, the orange logo on the box offers a clue.
Ridwell is a fast-growing company founded by a father and son, focused on reclaiming and repurposing materials that would otherwise be sent to landfills. In essence, the company offers a better way to get “rid” of stuff.
Twice a month, Ridwell comes to your home to collect a wide array of items that are given a second life. Plastic bags and food wrappers that are not suitable for curbside recycling are transformed into new products such as construction decking, landscaping materials, and irrigation pipes. Old towels, blankets, and sheets are shredded to make insulation. Ridwell also accepts burned-out light bulbs, fluorescent tubes, Styrofoam packaging, and wearable clothing and shoes.
Each pickup also provides an opportunity to offload what the company calls “featured items,” which may include crayons, corks, pots and pans, electronic wires and cables, cookware, school supplies, and even Halloween candy.
Ridwell asks customers to separate single-ply plastic film, such as newspaper bags and food packaging, from multi-layer plastics like Amazon bubble mailers and snack wrappers. Subscribers receive canvas bags to sort the various materials, which are collected by a Ridwell driver and replaced with clean bags for the next pickup.
“Ridwell is great — the multi-layer plastic was a great add-on, and clothes and rag fabrics are now easy to get rid of,” says neighbor Brooke Levin. “We also like that the ‘featured items’ go to nonprofit partners like The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse.”
But Ridwell, and plastic recycling in general, has its detractors. Regulatory hurdles and lawsuits aimed at protecting municipal garbage haulers have slowed the company’s expansion. And bundling and shipping hard-to-recycle materials like Styrofoam raises questions about the company’s carbon footprint.
In a recent episode of Forum on KQED radio, former EPA official Judith Enck offered a big-picture analysis of what she calls “the problem with plastic,” a phrase she used as the title of her new book. Enck explains that, fueled by the multi-billion-dollar petrochemical industry, the explosion of single-use plastic began in the 1950s. Today, the EPA estimates that each American generates about 250 pounds of plastic waste per year.
Enck also sees the idea of plastic recycling as a “marketing hoax,” since only about 5% of the plastic produced is repurposed. And even when a company like Ridwell steps in to divert more plastic from landfill, it remains in our environment, albeit in new forms — virtually forever.
From Enck’s point of view, the only real solution is to minimize plastic production at the point of manufacture by adopting a “refill, reuse” strategy with containers made of easily recycled materials like glass, aluminum, paper, hemp, and cardboard.
“We all dispose of so much plastic,” says Rockridge neighbor Aviva Black. “But since an early Ridwell subscriber in the neighborhood gifted three months of service to us, we've been able to recycle way more plastic. Plus, we're even more cognizant of what we're buying and eating.”
My own family has sorted out so much material that we’re able to use a smaller Waste Management bin, which helps offset Ridwell’s nominal $20-per-month subscription. The company continues to expand into new areas and recently launched a mail-in service for locations where pickup is not yet available.
Certainly, Ridwell alone can’t save the world, but it feels good to lighten the load that would otherwise languish in a landfill. If you know a neighbor with a Ridwell bin on their porch, ask them for a referral to receive a free trial, available through the company’s website, www.ridwell.com.
To learn more about combating plastic waste, visit www.beyondplastics.org.
