SEATTLE —
A Seattle-based company that helps subscribers recycle tricky items year-round is now offering help to everyone with one specific item: campaign signs. The company picks up these items from people’s doorsteps and properly disposes of them.
Now that the election is over, Ridwell CEO and co-founder Ryan Metzger said it’s important for people to properly dispose of signs.
“People had many of these sitting outside their yard and to me that’s a symbol of single use, because you have it out there for a month or so and then the election is over, what do you do with it?” he said.
Metzger points out that campaign signs are recyclable, but it’s not easy. They shouldn’t go in either the garbage or curbside recycling because they’re made of hard-to-recycle plastic.
“I think most times they get thrown in the garbage. They go straight to a landfill and get buried with a whole bunch of other stuff. I think some people may assume they’re recyclable because they feel like cardboard or they feel like plastic, so some people also may put them in their curbside recycling, which they shouldn’t do because that’s a contaminant. It’s not something they take,” he said.
Ridwell works with a company to make sure the two parts of signs are properly disposed of. This is the premise of their business: sending less to landfills. Ridwell picks up whatever hard-to-recycle items people might have, anything from plastic film to batteries to lightbulbs, and properly disposes of them.
It started with Metzger and his son helping their neighbors sort through these difficult items in their Seattle garage. The company now covers most of western Washington and operates in eight different markets.
The company estimates tens of millions of campaign signs were created this election year alone. Metzger knows they won’t properly recycle all of those, but they’re going to do what they can.
This year, anyone, even people who are not Ridwell subscribers, can request a sign pickup from their home for free. Pickups will start Monday, Nov. 25, and people are encouraged to sign up quickly.
“If we can get 20,000 of them, that’s a start. Then maybe next election season, in two years, we can get 50 and then 100. Things really, as we saw from our founding, you start with five batteries in a neighborhood, and then you’re at 25 million pounds. So with campaign yard signs, we hope it works the same way.” said Metzger.