Ridwell Recycling subscription service gaining popularity

When it comes to curbside recycling in the city of Minneapolis, if it’s not paper, glass, metal, or a certain type of plastic, it has to go in the trash bin. But there’s a recycling program becoming more popular throughout the city that helps divert even more items from landfills. 

Even if you’ve never heard of Ridwell before, odds are you’ve seen their signature white and orange boxes on one of your neighbors’ doorsteps. Ridwell is a Seattle-based subscription service that charges customers to pick up hard-to-recycle items such as batteries, lightbulbs, clothing, and styrofoam. The company entered the Twin Cities market in January 2022, and has since expanded to cover nearly every single zip code in Minneapolis, and much of its surrounding suburbs. 

The purpose of a service like Ridwell is to complement the curbside recycling most residents already do through the city. Customers who subscribe get a Ridwell box to put on their front step, where they can place items from a variety of different categories to be picked up every two weeks. 

“If you look in your garbage can at home, there’s actual stuff in there that can be recycled that the city of Minneapolis doesn’t take,” said E.J. Tso, general manager for Ridwell in the Twin Cities. “That’s where we step in.”

Part of it is convenience, too. Many of the items Ridwell collects could be recycled in some way, but not everyone has the time or ability to do so. 

“If you did want to recycle the items that we collect on your own, you would have to make five or six different trips on a regular basis,” Tso said. “It’s a convenience factor. Everything is collected at your doorstep. You don’t even have to be home.” 

One of the biggest categories of items Ridwell collects is plastic film, which includes plastic bags, bubble wrap, plastic wrap, and plastic that comes with ordering items online. While the city will take some types of plastic, it cannot take these items because they will clog the machines at their facility. 

Ridwell collects that plastic film from its members every two weeks and brings it back to their warehouse, where workers package it up for one of their partner organizations to pick up. In the Twin Cities, that partner is Trex, a company that makes composite decking boards from recycled plastic film and sawdust. 

That is one of the reasons Katie McClelland signed up to get a Ridwell box when she and her family moved when her family moved from D.C. to Minneapolis’ Linden Hills neighborhood last spring. 

“With having a baby and moving, we had a lot of packaging associated with ordering stuff online,” she said. “I thought it would be interesting to try out.” 

McClelland said she finds herself utilizing the service every two weeks, with plastic film being the items she now recycles the most of. 

Not everything Ridwell collects is recycled; much of it is repurposed and reused. In the Twin Cities, the company works with nonprofits like Free Geek to collect portable electronic devices, which the organization refurbishes and resells to low-income customers for well below the retail price. 

There is a rotating category every few weeks that lets members dispose of additional items that don’t fall into the other categories, like old pillowcases and towels. 

“You switch out your bedding and you don’t want to throw it away but you don’t know what else to do with it. Well, the folks at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center love to use pillowcases and towels to help wildlife that they’re trying to rehabilitate,” Tso said. 

Christmas lights were another recent rotating category, one that McClelland was particularly happy to take advantage of. 

“[They] felt like such a bad thing to put in the trash,” she said. 

Over the last 18 months, Ridwell has collected over 500,000 pounds of items to be recycled or reused that may have otherwise ended up in a landfill, Tso said.  

Ridwell is always looking to expand what types of items it can collect. As the company grows its footprint in the Twin Cities, Tso said he expects they will add new categories to the service, as long as they can find partners that can take those items. 

There are over 5,000 Twin Cities residents participating in the program, many of them in Minneapolis. Anyone can sign up for a Ridwell box, Tso said, whether you live in a single-family home, a duplex, or an apartment. 

“I think we have an obligation as neighbors and as Twin Cities residents to be more mindful about what goes in the trash,” Tso said. 

More information about Ridwell can be found at ridwell.com.