Introduction to US Coin Collection Specialist 'Reworld'
Collecting Coins from Trash for 7 Years... Earned 13.8 Billion Won
WSJ, "Americans Treat Coins as Trash"
A company in the United States has emerged that collected coins from trash and earned 13.8 billion won over seven years.
On the 17th (local time), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explained that approximately $68 million (about 93.4 billion won) worth of coins are discarded annually in the U.S. and introduced 'Reworld,' a company specializing in collecting discarded coins.
Reworld has collected at least $10 million (1.38 billion won) worth of coins over seven years. The media pointed out that "to many Americans, coins are like trash," explaining that "using physical currency has become cumbersome due to credit cards, mobile payments, and so on." Robert Weaples, an economics professor at Wake Forest University, said, "If you lost a $100 or $20 bill, you would go look for it, but if you lost a penny (1 cent), you wouldn't."
In the U.S., people perceive handling coins as a bothersome task. Coinstar, a company that exchanges coins for cash, has collected a total of 800 billion coins from 24,000 kiosks installed nationwide.
Given this situation, many coins end up falling between sofa cushions at home or in cars, then get sucked up by vacuum cleaners and thrown into trash bins, eventually being sent to landfills. At airport checkpoints, the Transportation Security Administration collects coins worth hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Reworld began collecting coins discarded in trash bins and elsewhere starting in 2017.
The company recovers 550,000 tons of metal annually, including coins. At Reworld's waste processing facility, bucket loaders move trash to sorting machines. These machines separate coins, which are then cleaned and spread out on metal racks to dry. Coins of various nationalities and denominations are collected. Workers wearing gloves sort the coins in trailers.
Some coins are damaged by incineration along with trash before arriving at Reworld, but about $6 million (8.2 billion won) out of the $10 million worth of coins recovered by the company are reported to be usable. Reworld sells or deposits coins worth between $500,000 and $1 million (700 million to 1.4 billion won) annually to local banks.
However, the media noted that the coin recovery business accounts for only a part of Reworld's revenue. Most of the actual profit comes from operating incineration facilities that burn collected waste to produce fuel.
Meanwhile, for these reasons, there have been calls in the U.S. to discontinue small-denomination coins whose manufacturing costs exceed their value. The U.S. Mint reportedly spent $707 million (about 976.3 billion won) on coin production last year. Seigniorage losses were recorded at $93 million (128.4 billion won) for nickels and $86 million (118.8 billion won) for pennies. Countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have already ceased circulation of 1-cent coins.
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