Consumers Get the Chance to Swap Trash for Cash With Green Card : Shopping: Ron Charter has devised system that lets people trade in used items for credit toward goods and services available at network of businesses.

Ron Charter thinks that he has found a recipe for success in the ‘90s: take one prolonged recession, mix liberally with the growing recycling craze, and voila , a magical card that turns trash into cash.

A long way from the ubiquitous Gold Card, Charter’s Green Card is the key to an “environmental bank” that lets customers swap things they no longer want for goods and services they need.

The system is simple: customers bring in their unwanteds--everything from used appliances to old clothes and books to empty aluminum cans--and get credit on their Green Card account. Then, they take the card to member merchants--a network of about 75 Orange County businesses including auto mechanics, pet shops, restaurants and doctors’ offices--and use it to make their purchases.

So far about 1,000 Green Cards grace Orange County wallets, and it looks like the concept, which was born out of recession-era desperation but since has been incorporated and copyrighted, may spread across the country.

“This is a new cash value system, a new form of exchange,” Charter explained, selling the idea to everyone who crosses his path. “I’ve shown consumers how they can basically open their closet and their garage and turn it into cash. If we can save the world and make a buck doing it, that’s what I’m for.”

“People are already thinking in green,” the 32-year-old Charter pointed out on a recent afternoon at his Costa Mesa headquarters. “I haven’t invented anything, I’ve just tied it all together.”

Charter consults published rates to determine the value of electronic items and offers customers a list of going rates for miscellaneous items. Generally, a microwave nets $75--about the price of a brake job. Compact discs are worth $1 to $5, good for a sandwich or something equivalent. A nice down jacket might be traded for a $20 haircut, and a bundle of old linens could put a few dollars toward consulting, accounting or attorney services.

The idea is attractive to both cash-poor consumers and customer-starved businesses.

“It helps people that are really hurting,” said 27-year-old Charles Gauthier of Anaheim, who recently traded a friend’s microwave for a valve job on his truck. “You can sort of store up some cash.”

Paula Castanon placed her husband’s ear, nose and throat medical practice into the network to provide a fallback position for patients pressed for cash.

“It’s a better way to try and help people use what they have and what we have,” Castanon said as she handed Charter a $225 check for a merchant membership one recent afternoon.

Dressed in a dark suit and paisley power tie, his shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail and a hole in his lobe where an earring once hung, Charter is a self-declared “ecopreneur.” He thinks the ‘90s combination of environmental fervor and economic doldrums will make him a millionaire.

“The reason it’s going to work is because the U.S. economy sucks,” Charter said, describing the 1980s as a “possession-rich” era that left Americans with more material goods and less money than they need.

The whole thing began seven months ago when, after nearly four years in business, Charter’s auto repair shop simply wasn’t breaking even. Regular customers confessed that they couldn’t afford to get their cars fixed.

On a whim, Charter offered a brake job for every working microwave.

“They were lining up on the street with microwaves,” he remembered. “I had more microwaves than you could imagine.”

Next it was TVs for timing belts.

As the recycling spiraled, some customers brought in stuff worth more than their repair bill. So they got credit on an “account.” Soon other merchants were calling to see if they could get in on the action.

The Green Card was born.

Today, there is about $17,000 in 1,000 Green Card accounts. Since the system opened up to other merchants two months ago, there have been about 65 transactions worth $4,400 in various stores.

Although the volume of actual business remains small, Charter’s enthusiasm for his own program is infectious. Each day, a few merchants and about a dozen new customers join the network, figuring they have nothing to lose.

Attorney Eileen Baker said she simply could not resist the recycling rage the card represents.

“We’ve got to get out of this cash economy,” she said when Charter arrived at her Huntington Beach office. “For them to take something out of their closet and trade it for my services, I know they care. That’s the kind of business I want.”

Within the next month, Charter plans to move the operation from an office at the back of his auto repair lot on Superior Avenue in Costa Mesa to a 20,000-square-foot warehouse.

At the warehouse, merchants who collect recyclables and used merchandise would lease space, and customers could drive in, drop off their wares at the appropriate

booth, and then collect vouchers for how much their goods are worth. Before leaving the warehouse, the customer would “cash out” by having the vouchers totaled and credited to his or her Green Card account.

Convenience, putting everything under one roof, is a crucial selling point for the Green Card.

“You can make more in a garage sale, but you’ve wasted two days of your time and you’ll throw a quarter of your stuff into the landfill,” Charter said. “Where else are you going to take everything you have?”

The other attraction to the burgeoning business is that everyone involved benefits.

Consumers get cash value for unwanted items, and money sitting in the Green Card account earns 3% interest. Merchants who accept the Green Card attract people who had no disposable cash. Those who deal in used goods or recyclables get a captive market at the warehouse. And Charter himself makes 2.5% of every transaction, plus annual fees from merchants who join the network and those who lease space in the warehouse.

“It’s a winning situation,” Charter said, repeating himself over and over as he enlisted new merchants, customers, and even satellite environmental bankers like himself who want to take the Green Card across the country. “If you can do something to help the environment while helping everyone else, you’re going to make it because that’s where we’re at right now.”

In Charter’s entrepreneurial mind the potential of the Green Card is unlimited: his business plan predicts 2,500 environmental banks across the nation by the year 2000.

“This job is a representation of change,” said Charter’s partner, Patrick Ciminera, 26. “Recycling is here to stay.”

Already, the fever has been caught by a pioneering couple who drove from Olympia, Wash., to see the Costa Mesa operation.

Avid environmentalists who were in the market for a new business opportunity, Linda and Paul Gast said they plan to invest their life savings and open a warehouse in their hometown. Charter is charging $10,000 for the concept and plans to spend 30 days on site training the Gasts.

“We’ve both been kind of waiting for something to come along in our lives and really be inspirational,” said Linda Gast, 46, noting that she and her husband have recently “recycled” their marriage after five years of divorce.

“We’re a throwaway world, that frustrates me no end,” she said, confident that recycling is the key to the future. “To be involved with a thing that says don’t throw it away, make a profit for the world--that’s it.”

A Cable News Network feature about the Green Card last month alerted the Gasts to Charter’s creation, and they are not alone. Already, other entrepreneurs from Florida, Oklahoma, Virginia, New York, and northern California have phoned.

“It’s huge,” says the ever-confident Charter, spouting plans for an automated, international accounting system for the cards. “We are literally going to touch every living creature in the world.”

Shopping With the Green Card

Based in the back of an auto repair shop in Costa Mesa, the Green Card network is a recycling center that will buy almost anything customers want to sell. What otherwise would become trash or lie about the house--from used appliances to empty cans--is redeemable for credit. Electronic equipment is valued according to manufacturers’ published rates; other items are evaluated by Green Card staffers. Trade-in prices are posted to customers’ Green Card accounts. A sample of current rates:

Appliances, electronics

Microwaves: $40-$75

Computers: $100-$150

Washers/dryers: $50-$75 each

Refrigerators (broken): $10-$15

Cameras (35-mm.): $30-$150

Car cassette decks: $10-$40

Car CD players: $10-$50

Car radios: $10-$30

Car speakers: $8-$15

Raw materials

Aluminum cans: 85 cents per pound

Glass bottles: 5 cents each

Cassettes: 50 cents to $2

Records: $1-$5

Compact discs: $1-$5

Clothing

Jeans: 25 cents to $4

Sweaters: $1-$4

Sunglasses: 25-99 cents

Sports jackets: $1-$5

Leather shoes: $1-$5

Leather belts: 25 cents to $10

Books

Hardcover: $1-$5

Paperback: 25 cents to $1

Miscellaneous

Bicycles about: $35

Curtains: $1-$6

Mini-blinds: $3-$25

Towels: 25 cents to $2

Bedspreads: $1-$10

THE MARKETPLACE

Customers can spend the amounts credited to their Green Card account at any member merchant. So far, about 75 Orange County businesses accept the card, with more companies joining weekly. Here are some of the businesses that accept the Green Card:

ABS Printing, 10862 Capital Ave., 4-L, Garden Grove

Time-Out Sports Bar-Grille, 1652 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim

Triple NO Video, 2052 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa

Mail Boxes Etc., 1048 Irvine Ave., Newport Beach

Poster Art ‘n’ Graphics, 1835-D Newport Blvd., Suite 159, Costa Mesa

Traut & Traut (law firm), 200 W. Santa Ana Blvd., 900, Santa Ana

Dr. David Castanon, 17822 Beach Blvd., Suite 325, Huntington Beach

Terry’s Waterbeds, 2052 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa

Worldview Travel, 535 Anton Blvd., 150, Costa Mesa

Jim’s Tuxedo Junction, 1812 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa

Cordi’s Carpet Cleaners, 3021 McNab Ave., Long Beach

Source: Green Card