Are You Earning for Recycling Your Household Waste? If Not, What’s Holding You Back?
Recycle for cash with Bower, the UK’s recycling app! Scan your items, earn points, and redeem them for rewards or donate to charity.
Did you know that you can earn money by recycling the items you use at home? Most of us recycle at home as it has become a part of our daily lives. However, a large percentage of people still do not recycle, which is a shame. To address this issue, the Bower app was designed to incentivize people financially to recycle as much as possible. The idea is to make the UK more sustainable by reducing the amount of recyclable products that go into landfills, which can otherwise be reused and are better for our planet!
Bower offers to pay you to recycle your recyclable items at home without visiting a particular recycling centre. You can put your recyclables in your regular recycling bin at home and earn money. You won’t become rich, but you will earn money for doing something you would do anyway. Plus, you’ll contribute to the nationwide effort to recycle as much as possible.
Bower is a recycling app that rewards you with points for every item you recycle. You only need to scan the item’s barcode and put it in your recycling bin. Once you have accumulated enough points, you can trade them for cash or vouchers or donate your earnings to charity if you prefer.
The points-to-cash conversion rate is as follows:
25 points = 40p
50 points = 80p
100 points = £1.60
If you have more than 100 points, you can cash out the £1.60 plus any extra amount, such as 40p, 80p, or £1.60, depending on how many additional points you have.
You received 1 point per item scanned, which is about 1.6p.
To clarify, when you earn points on Bower, they will stay in your account until you have enough to cash out. You can cash out once a month, and the money will be transferred directly to your bank account, usually within a couple of days after setting up the transfer.
Additionally, you can use your points to redeem social offers on the Bower app. These offers vary and could include discount vouchers for future purchases or money vouchers for product discounts.
Moreover, Bower has partnered with several retailers and big brands to offer bonuses for recycling certain products. For instance, Bower has collaborated with Ocado, the online food retailer, to offer a 20p bonus when a Bower user recycles an Ocado own-brand two and four-pint milk bottle. The scheme allows for 20,000 redemptions worth £4,000 to Bower users. To participate in this scheme, you must scan a unique QR code on the milk bottle packaging, which will allocate the 20p reward to your account. The data is also sent back to Ocado so they can track which areas of the country are better at recycling than others.
This type of technology is likely to be used as part of a UK-wide recycling scheme, which will be set up in 2025 and will be a deposit return scheme. Under this scheme, consumers will pay a deposit on certain products, which will be refunded if the product is returned to be recycled. However, the details of this scheme are still being worked out and will likely differ quite a bit from Bower’s app system, but the concept is similar.
How does it work?
To start using the app, you must take a photo of your bin and verify your location using the app’s GPS. This will become your personal recycling location. The app uses location tracking to ensure you are next to your bin when scanning your recyclable items. If you are not nearby, you won’t be able to proceed.
Suppose you need to get your own bin or recycling facilities. In that case, the app will show you the nearest recycling station where you can recycle and get paid for what you recycle. This could be a supermarket or a designated recycling centre, such as a local authority’s nearest recycling point or public recycling station. For example, local supermarkets often recycle items such as plastic bags.
The app has a built-in scanner, which you can use to scan the barcode of the products you’re recycling. You can only get paid for items that have a barcode. If the app has not encountered the product, you will be asked to add it to its catalogue. This involves taking a photo of the item, telling the app how large it is, and then telling the app what the product is (e.g. milk cartons, cardboard boxes, etc.). This step is optional, but it helps others who use the app.
The app’s database of everyday items UK families use has increased steadily since its launch. As more people join the app and new barcodes get added, you will be less likely to be asked to add a product to the app’s catalogue.
There is a daily limit to the number of items you can scan. You can only scan each product once per day. For example, if you have twelve empty cans of Diet Coke, you can only scan one can daily.
After you scan the products you want to recycle, the app will ask if you will recycle them now. The app will allocate the points to your account if you say yes and are next to your recycling bins.
The app will keep you updated on your points balance and tell you how many grams of carbon you’ve saved by recycling your waste. For instance, my 39 points saved 509g of carbon. This is equivalent to 20 minutes of hair drying, 3 minutes of showering in hot water, 4 kilometres of driving a car, 6 minutes of vacuuming or one day of powering a 40w light bulb. It’s impressive and shows that you are contributing positively to the planet.
I don’t need financial incentives to recycle; I do it because it’s the right thing to do. However, I will only say yes if a company wants to pay me for recycling!
Only 44.4% of household consumers’ waste in the UK was recycled in 2020. This means less than half of UK households recycled their recyclable items. This is a poor performance, and there is much room for improvement. It’s hoped that this financial incentive will increase recycling rates, as has been proven during trials in the UK and the US.
Recycling is an effective way to reduce our carbon footprint and environmental impact. To achieve this, it is essential to prevent recyclable materials from ending up in general waste bins. By doing so, we can reduce carbon emissions and plastic pollution and help the UK reach its sustainability goals. Another benefit of recycling is that it helps to reduce the need for new packaging, especially for plastic products.
Bower is an app that helps people in the UK recycle their household waste. Although it is relatively new to the UK, it has been available in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland for a while. The app has around 550,000 users who have recycled over 55 million items.
In 2025, a UK-wide recycling scheme will be introduced, where consumers will pay a deposit on certain products that will be refunded if the product is returned for recycling. However, this scheme may differ from the Bower system. For now, Bower is a great way to earn cash for recycling.
You can download the Bower app from the Apple and Google Play stores or via the Bower website.
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