Recycle Your Pennies
Go Green with Your Change to Save the Earth and Your Wallet
Here's a new spin on recycling: turn your dusty old piggy bank into useful -- and green -- cash. Did you know that when you horde coins you're taking then out of the monetary system? And that the U.S. Mint has to make even more coins for everybody else to use? Recycle your old coins and get them back into circulation to save the valuable resources needed to mint new coins.
Penny Stats
Under normal conditions, pennies and other coins can last 30 years or more in circulation before they wear out and need to be replaced. This is much more durable than U.S. paper currency, which only lasts about two years. Even though coins have such amazing durability, the U.S. Mint still produced 1,900,000,000 coins in 2009, with 1,145,000,000 of those coins being pennies.
Before 2005, the cost to the U.S. taxpayer to make a penny was just under the face value of the coin itself: .97 cents. Since then the cost of copper has gone up. In 2006 pennies cost about 1.23 cents to manufacture. In 2007, the cost of zinc when up (and pennies are made of 97.5% zinc) making the price of a penny 1.7 cents.
The skyrocketing cost of metals caused the U.S. government to ban the melting or exporting of pennies and nickles in 2006.
How Much Change is in Your House?
Its estimated that nearly $10 billion dollars worth of loose change is sitting idle in American homes: tucked away in piggy banks, peanut butter jars and old shoe boxes. Just ten percent of that cash could equal 15 billion coins.
According to Coinstar, a maker of coin counting machines, the average U.S. home has $90 dollars in loose change stashed away. They believe that most people would cash in their coins if they knew that it would help the environment.
Their website has a change calculator to let you find out how much your coins could save the environment. For example, a 32 oz jar of "recycled" change could save 324 liters of water and 500 pounds of geological waste needed to produce an equal amount of new coins.
How You Can Help Recycle
Recycling your pennies and other change is really very easy. Instead of letting them collect dust in a forgotten drawer, round up your loose change and return it to the bank. Most banks will need you to roll your change into paper tubes first, which can be quite a chore if you have years worth of change to turn in.
The easier way is to find a coin counting machine, like a Coinstar, at your local grocery store or bank. Just dump your loose change into the coin counter, and it will rapidly count it and give you a cash voucher to use at the store or exchange for cash. Coinstar charges a 8.9 cent fee per dollar for the service. However, if you choose to exchange your coins for a gift card, the fee is waived.
Coins wait for recycling
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