By Thomas Miner

April 26, 2010 – PepsiCo, Waste Management and Keep America Beautiful, Inc. announced an ongoing partnership last week aimed at increasing recycling rates in the United States from 34% to 50% by the year 2018 through the use of stand-alone recycling kiosks, called Dream Machines.

These kiosks will be located in high-traffic public spaces such as gas stations, grocery stores, shopping centers, stadiums and parks to increase the visibility of recycling and influence mainstream consumer behavior. Each machine will manage a personal reward system, which allows customers to gain and redeem points for each piece of recycling they deposit.

"If every household in the U.S. recycled just three more plastic bottles a month, we could divert more than 23 million pounds of plastic from our landfills each month and increase the amount of recycled plastic used to manufacture new bottles," said Jeremy Cage, who heads the Dream Machine recycling initiative for PepsiCo.

According to Sustainable Business, Rite Aid has signed on to be the first national retailer offering the kiosks in their stores nationwide, starting with 150 stores in North Carolina. The organization hopes to roll out thousands more Dream Machines this year, which will be provided by GreenOps (a Waste Management company). Greenopolis will be providing and operating the incentive program.