Bales of recycled material at Friedman Recycling in Albuquerque. Ridwell Recycling presented its recycling program to the Environmental Sustainability Board May 21. Post File Photo

By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

There is an ongoing effort in Los Alamos to produce zero waste and the Seattle-based recycling company, Ridwell Recycling, may be able to help.

During the May 21 Environmental Sustainability Board meeting, Ridwell CEO Ryan Metzger discussed his company and how it plucks items from the trash and gives them a new purpose. The board did not take any action on this presentation.

Ridwell started in 2018, he said as just a weekend project he did with his oldest son, Owen.

Metzger said their basement had become a catch-all of things his family didn’t know what to do with: burned out lightbulbs, dead batteries, plastic bags, Styrofoam and holiday lights. So, he and his son decided they would pick an item and research where it could be taken.

The idea took off; “we decided to make it a neighborhood wide project,” Metzger said.

They began offering to take their neighbors’ recycling and the whole project became steadily bigger.

“I think an important feature that we had incorporated was we showed everyone where everything went,” Metzger said.

He added that they would take a picture of the material being dropped off and follow that by writing a sentence about what the location did with the material.

“They could understand what the fate of the material they had left out for us was,” Metzger said.

The project, dubbed Owen’s List, grew to 4,000 participants and handled material in 30 different categories.

“It took off in a really powerful and unexpected way, and it gave me a lot of opportunity to reflect and take notice on whether there was an unmet need around how recycling could work in a transparent, trusted way,” Metzger said.

It was also around this time that the recycling industry was flipped upside down by China’s decision to no longer accept the world’s recycled material.

As a result, Metzger said people became a lot more aware and curious about where recycling goes and what it is getting turned into. Other hot topics were ocean plastic and landfills.

All of this contributed to Metzger’s, his wife’s and the other founders’ decision to quit their jobs and turn this weekend project into a business.

“It felt like the time was right to do it and we had a lot of people who already demonstrated that they cared about the problem that we were focused on,” he said.

So, what is the problem? According to Metzger, it is easy to buy things but how to get rid of them is not.

Therefore, he said Ridwell Recycling tackles how to take the consumption side of things and bring it to the reverse side “so there’s more balance and more harmony in how people are buying, consuming, getting rid of stuff and less waste going to landfills.”

Ridwell offers two versions to its customers. The first and the original version is a pick-up service. Customers receive a bin that can collect 15 items. These bins will be delivered to Ridwell’s partners. Metzger said this service is available in eight municipal locations including Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Austin, the Bay area, Denver, Atlanta and Minneapolis.

The other version of Ridwell is a mail-in service, which is available to anyone in the U.S. Participants receive a colored bag with a pre-paid shipping label one it.

The color of the bag determines the type of recycled material that can be put into it.

The bags will be delivered, either by Ridwell or the U.S. Postal Service, to different warehouses, where the material is screened and consolidated to ensure there is no contamination.

Metzger said Ridwell has more than 300 partners who accept recycled materials. For instance, they have a partner who takes bread tags, another who accepts eyeglasses and another who takes bicycle tubes.

The pick-up service ranges from $18-$20 a month while the mail-in service is $9-$12 a month. Metzger said his company has 170,000 households that are members and recently crossed 43 million pounds of recycled material.