Are you drowning in a sea of Amazon envelopes, AA batteries, and Goodwill clothing donations? Your home is about to get tidier with the new door-to-door pickup service, Ridwell, now available to Des Moines residents. It’s as simple as collecting your hard-to-recycle items, opting-in to pickups on Ridwell’s website and setting the items in your Ridwell bin on pickup day.
Ridwell collects recyclables that the city curbside program doesn’t take such as plastic film, batteries, lightbulbs and threads (clothing and shoes). A fifth featured category every two weeks partners with a local organization that needs it. For example, one recent rotating category collected used kitchenware to be donated to refugee families. Other categories included wine corks, backpacks and leftover Halloween candy.
In 2017, Seattle dad Ryan Metzger, and his son Owen, started collecting batteries from their neighbors and researching more responsible recycling options for many other categories. Even as a young boy, Owen knew that the chemicals in the batteries were not good for the landfill. The need grew and Ryan founded his company Ridwell to offer a convenient, time-saving alternative and the reassurance that your old things are going to the right place. For example, Ridwell partners with the company Trex to turn plastic film that might otherwise go to waste into plastic lumber used as decking material.
You can join over 12,000 people across the Seattle metro region in wasting less with Ridwell. Des Moines is one of the newest areas where Ridwell is available, with over 50 neighbors already making a difference today.