Americans throw away up to $68 mn in coins a year. Here is where it all ends up.

livemint.com:

At a waste-management facility in Morrisville, Pa., workers load incinerated trash into industrial machinery that separates and sorts metals, then sends them to get hosed down. The reward: buckets of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Americans toss as much as $68 million worth of change each year, according to Reworld.

The sustainable-waste processing company is on a treasure-hunt to find it. The company says that in the seven years since it started the effort, it has collected at least $10 million worth of coins. Coins are as good as junk for many Americans.

Buses, laundromats, toll booths and parking meters now take credit and debit cards and mobile payments. Using any form of physical currency has become more of an annoyance, but change is often more trouble than it is worth to carry around. The U.S.

quarter had roughly the buying power in 1980 that a dollar has today. “If you lost a $100 bill you’d look for it. If you lost a $20 bill you’d look for it.

If you lost a book you’d look for it," said Robert Whaples, an economic s professor at Wake Forest University. “But a penny, you’re just not going to look for it." Whaples has encouraged the government to kill the penny, which costs about three times its value to make. The U.S.

Mint spent $707 million making coins last year. Canada, New Zealand and Australia have removed their 1 cent pieces from circulation. Because coins can be hard to spend, they circulate slowly through the economy—or don’t circulate at all.

More than half of the coins in the U.S. are sitting in people’s homes, according to the Federal Reserve. Spotting change in the trash Many coins are also getting left behind.