re-cir-cu-late
to once again pass from person to person something kept from doing so ... like coins
BusinessWeek reported that it cost 1.3 cents to make a penny and provided an estimate from CoinStar that 150 billion coins are going unused -- socked away in mason jars and sofa cushions. ("How to Turn Pennies Green," BusinessWeek 5/5/08)
If just 10% were recirculated, savings from not mining would include enough water for 82 million showers, energy to light 4.1 million 60-watt light bulbs, and CO2 emissions savings equivalent to 12,619 cars annually.
Dad had a cast-iron bank -- appropriately in the shape of a pig but incongruously sitting up on its haunches, snout pointing to the sky. This wasn't a pretty pig by any stretch of the imagination. Every now and then dad would bring out the pig and put a screwdriver to its back. The two halves would pull apart and the coins inside had no choice but to spill out onto the kitchen table. We sorted and we counted. The silver dollars and wheat pennies were definitely from a earlier time. Mercury-head dimes had been thumbed so often that the images were hard to make out. And then dad would screw the pig back together and we'd push the coins once again through its back.
As a teenager I collected pennies. Whenever I needed to get my mind off something, I'd open my banks and count the pennies. Sometimes I would sort them into years. Always I'd look for the wheat pennies or the steel ones from the war era. And then I'd put them all back for another time.
Today I counted my pennies once again but for a different purpose. I'm putting them back into circulation. All 850 of them. (Okay, so there were 13 left over and likely a few more in the sofa.)
I'm keeping my wheat pennies, steel pennies and my Cheerios pennies (authentic, mint-condition millennium pennies). There's no room left in dad's cast-iron pig, but maybe someday my fluorescent, shag dog can sit proudly beside the pig on the kitchen table, it's contents being counted and sorted by future generations.
Barb's Ideas
- Trade up -- go through your mason jar and replace 10 dimes with a dollar bill, 25 pennies with a quarter, and then use the coins to buy your daily coffee
- Take your jar to a CoinStar machine and trade coins for gift cards. Estimate how much money is in your jar with the CoinStar calculator (over $225 in a gallon of mixed coins).
- Keep saving by taking the coins to a bank and opening a savings account (beware minimums and monthly charges)
- Stuff your pockets with the coins when you go holiday shopping and put a handful into each bell-ringer's kettle you pass...it'll make both you and the ringer smile
- Have a fund raiser with your church or group -- ask everyone to donate the contents of their piggy banks (CoinStar estimates $90 in coins per household -- that's a lot of change!)
- Go coinless -- use debit cards or cash cards for your purchases
- Start a mobile coin-counting business -- find a decommissioned Brinks truck and build in a coin-counting machine. Go into neighborhoods (like the ice cream man of our youth) and help folks trade in their coins.
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