With the use of coins lessening, as more businesses accept digital payments, many of them remain hidden in pockets, stuck in couches, or vacuumed up and thrown away, writes J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. 

“People don’t have as much of an opportunity to spend them as they did in the past,” said reporter Oyin Adedoyin. 

One waste management facility in Morrisville runs a coin collection operation by separating coins from everyday trash. 

“It’s a huge facility, and so four acres of that land is dedicated to just extracting coins from the trash,” said Adedoyin, who recently visited the facility. 

Each year, the Morrisville coin-collecting team extracts anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million worth of coins from trash. 

“Once they sort them and clean them and check to make sure they’re still viable, they send them to a third-party processor who counts them, gives them the money, and then distributes the actual physical coins back into the banking system through local banks,” said Adedoyin. 

The facility estimated that Americans throw away up to $68 million worth of coins every year. 

Read more about the issue that results in thousands of coins being collected in The Wall Street Journal. 

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Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on BUCKSCO Today in April 2024 .