PA Waste Company Collects $10M In Loose Change: Reports

MORRISVILLE, PA — A Bucks County waste management company found truth in the saying that "one man's trash is another man's treasure" after collecting more than $10 million in loose change in the past seven years.

Ash Processing at Reworld in Morrisville began collecting coins in 2017 after noticing a considerable amount of them in the trash, the company told the Wall Street Journal in April. The reward has been buckets of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.

"What we have is a series of assorted materials," director Rebecca Guardino told FOX Business' Jeff Flock during a recent visit to the Bucks County facility. "This is about the quarter-sized particles where we usually get… a little bit of hardware, but mostly quarters."

Americans throw away an average of $68 million in change every year, according to Reworld. To find it, Reworld uses machines to sift through incinerated trash. This forces coins to fall through round holes before they’re sorted into bins, the company told Fox Business.

Once sorted, the coins are moved through a washing station before they're placed on a rack to dry, reports said.

"This allows us to better sort the coins, to determine what coins are in good condition or have been damaged, but it also lets us know which denominations we're dealing with," Guardino told Fox Business.

Reworld typically collects anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million in coins per year, the company told the Wall Street Journal, which it turns over to a third party to count and deposit to local banks.

Reworld recovers 550,000 tons of metals each, including soda cans, old pipes, keys and silverware.