A single waste management facility in Pennsylvania has collected $10 million in lost coins since it began picking them out of the trash in 2017, a company executive said.
The Reworld waste processing plant in Morrisville uses sifting machines to carefully remove and sort coins from incinerated garbage before washing them off, leaving them shiny and clean.
“This allows us to better sort the coins, to determine what coins are in good condition or have been damaged, but it also lets us know which denominations we’re dealing with,” Rebecca Guardino, the director of ash processing, told FOX Business’s Jeff Flock on Monday.
As the worker and reporter sorted through a bin at the facility, Guardino explained how one man’s trash may become another’s treasure.
“We process about 20 million tons of waste a year,” she told Flock.
The company estimates that Americans throw away approximately $68 million in change each year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Reworld began sorting through coins in 2017. Out of the $10 million collected, about $6 million were in good enough shape to be put back into circulation.
That $6 million was “turned over to a third party to be counted and deposited to local banks,” FOX Business reported.
