A recent article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention while scrolling through online news feeds. The headline, often borderline clickbait, did its job this time. I had to know more. I even subscribed. Now, I just have to remember to cancel my trial subscription.

It alluded to the idea that Americans lose $68 million dollar a year in change into the trash. While that only factors out to a few cents per person among the 334,914,895 people in the country, it’s still a somewhat surprising number.

It’s significant enough that one waste recycling facility in Pennsylvania is devoting more than a “token” effort to recovering coins that are abandoned, believing there’s “gold in them there trash mountains.” Not exactly a prospecting craze with the romanticism of California or the Yukon, but times have changed.

Sophisticated equipment seeks out objects that could be coins, cleans them (gasp!) and sends them for human scrutiny. If they pass, they go somewhere to be kept until redemption.

The article goes on to relate what we have come to accept. Circulating coins just aren’t circulating like they used to. When you have things that were once heavily reliant on coins, like laundromats, vending machines, parking meters and toll booths, that are now paid electronically or by a physical card, coins stay in hiding. They accumulate in drawers, under couch cushions and any number of places until someone takes some type of action.

Another surprising statistic came from the realization that the Transportation Security Administration manages to find itself in possession of hundreds of thousands of dollars in abandoned coins and currency. At the end of fiscal year 2019, the TSA reported that $926,030.44 had been left behind at security checkpoints at airports. The figure included $18,899.09 in non-U.S. coins and currency.

The agency is required to file reports on these matters and the reports break it down by airports. Far and away, the most money in the 2019 report was left at JFK in New York ($98,100). San Francisco was a distant second at $52,668.70, but even that is more than $1,000 a week! The change left behind gets rolled into the operating budget, because Congress gave the TSA the authority use that money for security operations.

Next time, you go through the checkpoint, don’t forget your coins. Don’t be a contributing factor in the growing problem of abandoned circulating coins.

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