I was having lunch yesterday with my daughter at the University of Delaware. The food court was very full and we found a table in a nook at the very end of the room. Tucked in the nook was a very cool vending machine that recycles plastic bottles and gives you points that can be redeemed for stuff or that can be donated to charity AND the more cans and bottles that are recycled in Dream Machines, the more PepsiCo will donate to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) to support career training, education and job creation for post-9/11 U.S. veterans with disabilities…the Dream Machines can help our nation’s heroes make their own dreams come true! The machine was placed in the food court to support the University’s sustainability efforts. Across from our table was a green recycling bin full to the brim with plastic water, soda and juice bottles; I couldn’t resist!
Using the machine is easy. You can choose to register or just recycle. Registering allows you to accumulate points for
The Dream Machine at Trabant Hall Univ of Delaware
stuff. The machine supplies bar coded cards that you register and swipe. Once logged in, you scan the item. The machine reads the item’s UPC to determine if it is an acceptable recyclable. If yes, it directs you to place the bottle in one of two doors and provides immediate gratification by reporting on the screen how many points you have amassed. We picked through the green recycling bin for awhile – pick, scan, recycle – pick, scan, recycle – until we noticed one of the cafeteria ladies watching us. Thinking maybe this was her purvue we stopped but as we guiltily walked away she smiled and said that one student had ‘earned’ an iPad or some such thing by recycling everything in the bins.
When we got home we logged on to the greenopolis website and found that our points were displayed with the rewards that were available for our balance. Turns out we need at least 100 points to ‘earn’ something tangible but we could donate to a charity. For now we are holding onto our points – the lure of the iPad is too great. Next we are in Trabant Hall we will rummage through the recycling bins and pick, scan, recycle our way through lunch.
I think a lot more students would use the machine if it was in a more accessible location – for now it will be us, the iPad kid and the cafeteria lady who participate.
