We Toss $62 Million of Loose Change Every Year. This Company Wants Some of It
- Cash once buried in landfill now worth finding as costs surge
- Americans toss about $61.8 million of coins in trash each year
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There’s a Covanta Holding Corp. incinerator outside Philadelphia that produces electricity from burning garbage. It also produces something else: stacks and stacks of blackened, sooty coins.
Over the course of a year, those nickels, dimes and quarters add up to about $360,000. That’s seven times the average income in the Philadelphia metropolitan region, and the money is piling up as Covanta waits for the U.S. Mint to resume coin purchases under an exchange program it suspended in November.