A “garbage bank” will premiere this year in Santa Teresa del Tuy, a bedroom community southeast of Caracas where some 300,000 people live, and who generate 100 tons of solid waste each day, the project's main promoter, ecologist Oswaldo Alvarado, told Tierramérica. The bank “will receive waste separated into categories by the residents and will be counted in kilograms in individual accounts, saving metal, plastic, paper, cardboard and glass. They will earn the same interest as the market and in three months they can withdraw up to 80 percent of the total,” said Alvarado.

The Santa Teresa city government issued 186,000 dollars in credit for the bank to set up storage, mills and compactors for the materials. Forty percent of the garbage there is recyclable and the initiative is predicted to generate income of more than 2,400 dollars a month, says Jesús Peñaloza, responsible for environment.