Updated in October 2024 due to new Bower changes and updates
Recycle for cash with Bower, the UK's new recycling app! Scan your items, earn points, and redeem them for rewards!
Discover the Bower app that rewards UK users with cash, vouchers, or charitable donations for everyday waste items. It makes use of existing consumers' recycling facilities, so a user can their recyclable items, at home, with the built-in scanner, earn points, and redeem them for rewards.
Bower is app-based; you scan the barcode of packaging you have, and as you put them into your recycling bin, and you will be awarded points/coins for each item you scan. You can then redeem those points for cashback, vouchers or even for giving to charity when you hit certain point totals.
In October 2024, Bower made some changes to how it works:
Unlimited Withdrawals: Starting October 1st 2024, there are no limits to how much you can earn and withdraw. The more you engage, the more you get back! In the past you were limited to £2.60 per month in earning withdrawals.
Two Currencies - XP and Coins: Each scan gives you XP (experience points) that help you quickly climb the levels. Scanning items from our partners also gives you Coins that can be redeemed for cash (5 Coins per package).
New Missions and Challenges: Participate in our new missions to earn extra Coins. Each month, Bower will also have challenges that give you Coins.
How Does Bower Work?
First, you need to tell the app where your bin is. You do this by taking a photo of your bin, and the app's in-built GPS will verify your location, and this will become your personal recycling location. Once you've done this, the app will use location tracking to know that you're next to your bin when scanning your recyclable items. If you're not nearby, it won't let you proceed.
If you don't want to use your own bins for recycling, or you don't have recycling facilities, the app will show you the nearest recycling station you can take your recycling to, where you can recycle, and get paid for what you do recycle. This could be a supermarket or a designated recycling centre, such as a local authority's nearest recycling point or public recycling station. Items such as plastics, such as plastic bags, will often be recycled at a local supermarket, which can be pretty convenient.
The concept is pretty simple. You use the Bower app on your phone to scan the barcodes on the packaging that you are putting into the recycling bin you have at home. You'll be awarded points for every item you scan (You can only scan one of each item per day, (as an example, if you have two cans of Coca-Cola to be put in the recycling bin, you'll earn points for the first can, but not for the second one), and those points will be added to the Bower-recycle bag on the app.
If the app hasn't encountered the product you are recycling before, you will be asked to add it to the apps catalogue, which involves taking a photo of the item, telling the app how large it is, and telling the app what the product is, e.g.milk cartons, cardboard boxes etc, although you don't have to do this, but it does help others if you do this. The amount of barcodes of packaging that the app stores have stored in its database of everyday items used by UK families has increased steadily over the short time the app has been available to UK users, and more people join the app and new barcodes get added, and so it's less likely you'll be asked to do this.
If the product doesn't have a barcode, for example, cans for drink from a supermarket multipack, which aren't supplied with a barcode, you can now select the new 'no barcode' option, which allows you to take a photo of what you are recycling, and the app uses its Ai magic to try and determine what sort of product you are recycling and will suggest what the item is and ask you to confirm. If correct, it will then add that item to your recycle bag, with the other items, which you'll earn coins for.
Once you tell the app that you've finished scanning for now, you click on the 'drop off scanned waste button', which tells the app that you've put items into your recycling bin. Those items will be converted into coins, on the app, and once you have enough coins, you can then convert those coins into money vouchers that you can convert to cash that you can then withdraw to your bank.
How Many Coins Do You Need To Collect To Exchange For Cash?
As of October 2024, here is the amount of money you can earn from collection coins, and the denomination of coins to be able to claim the cash :
50 coins = 40p
100 coins = 80p
200 coins = £1.60
500 coins - £4.00
1000 coins = £8.00
The cash can be withdrawn to your bank account, or if you'd prefer, you can donate it to charity. I've found that it takes about 7 days for the money to be transferred from the app’s bank to my bank account.
You can also use your coins to redeem special offers on the Bower app. Offers vary, but you could redeem points for exclusive coupons from specific brands or free trials of services such as magazine reading apps.
In addition, Bower has teamed up with certain retailers and big brands and is offering bonuses for recycling particular products. As an example, as I write this, Bower is offering extra cashback, which is paid into your Bower account for buying Varta batteries, and this rewards Bower users £1 if you buy Varta batteries and then activate a coupon on the Bower app and upload a copy of your receipt. The £1 will then be added to your Bower account once the cashback has been confirmed. Thers similar offers for buying Corsodyl, Aquafresh, Pronamel and Sensodyne products, offering 40p cashback.
The new XP levels mean that the more you recycle, the higher up the XP levels you go, and the higher you go, the more points you can earn and the more challenges and other incentives you can get involved in.
The app will keep you updated on how many grams of carbon you've saved by recycling your waste. As an example, my recent 39 points saved 509g of carbon, which is equal to 20 minutes of hair drying, 3 minutes of showering in hot water, 4 kilometres of driving a car, 6 minutes of vacuuming or 1 day of powering a 40w light bulb up, which is pretty impressive and shows you are doing your bit for the planet. So far, Bower has saved some 10 MT of CO₂, which is pretty impressive!
I don't need financial incentives for recycling; I do it anyway as a principal; it's the right thing to do, but if a company wants to pay me for recycling what I'm recycling regardless, I won't say no!
Not everyone is good at recycling; in the UK, only 44.4% of household consumers' waste was recycled in 2020, so less than half of UK households recycled their recyclable items, which is a poor performance, so there is a lot of room for improvement, and it's hoped that this financial incentive will increase the recycling rates, as has proven to be the case during trials in the UK and the US.
It makes sense to try and stop as many recyclable materials from being put into general waste bins instead of recycling bins and is a brilliant example of ways for people to reduce their carbon footprint and negative environmental impact, and it will hopefully mean as a nation we won't produce as much carbon dioxide and reduce carbon emissions, not to mention reduce plastic pollution which over recent years has been shown to be such a problem, especially in our oceans, and this is the purpose of the app, to help the UK reach its sustainability goals.
It's worth remembering that as more is recycled, more of the recycled products go back into the supply chain, which reduces the need to produce as much new packaging. This is great for items such as pet bottles or other products that rely on plastic for manufacturing, as frankly, the less new plastic that is produced, the better that is for many reasons!
The app is still fairly new to the UK, but it has been available for a while in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. Bower has around 680,000+ users who are now better at recycling their household waste and have recycled over 100M items!
This type of technology will likely be used as part of a proposed UK-wide recycling scheme, likely to be set up in 2025, which will be a deposit return scheme where consumers will pay a deposit on certain products, which will be refunded if the product is returned to be recycled; however, this is still up in the air somewhat and will likely differ quite a bit from the Bower's app system, but the concept is similar, where consumers will pay a deposit on certain products, which will be refunded if the product is returned to be recycled; however, this is still up in the air somewhat and will likely differ quite a bit from the Bower system, and so, for now, Bower seems like a great way to earn cash for recycling.
The app is available to download for free on both the Apple and Google Play app stores and via the Bower website.