Starting May 1st, the City of Knoxville's curbside recycling program will no longer be affiliated with the Recyclebank rewards program. Nothing else about the household curbside service will change. The move will save the City more than $90,000 a year.

Any household reward points earned through Recyclebank will remain redeemable through the Recyclebank website.

The decision to discontinue the rewards program came after Recyclebank announced a change in the design of the program. Until now, Recyclebank has monitored the amount of waste recycled by each household and awarded points depending on volume. But the company, based in New York City, announced last month that it is changing to a "community-based rewards" program that would simply take the average of waste collected from all the households on a route and award points evenly.

"Even before this change, our participation rates were low when compared to the overall costs to the City for the rewards program," said David Brace, the City's Public Service Director. "We expect this change would reduce that participation even further, so working with our contractor we have decided to end our participation in the Recyclebank program."

The City's curbside recycling program is run by contractor Waste Connections of Tennessee, Inc. Waste Connections had a subcontract with Recyclebank for the rewards program, at a cost of 39 cents per month per household. That currently amounts to $7,628.01 per month, or $91,536.12 a year. The savings will be used to begin addressing the existing waiting list for the household curbside program.