MetroChange

 by  Genevieve Hoffman, Paul May, Stepan Boltalin

Every year, millions of dollars worth of value on MTA MetroCards is lost or discarded.<br /> <br /> MetroChange takes this value and puts it to good use, before cards are discarded. Swipe your MetroCard at a MetroChange kiosk; the value on the card is transferred to a central fund. This fund is donated to a charity once per month. The physical card is taken for recycling.<br /> <br /> Since there is usually up to $2 left on MTA Metrocards (partially thanks to the MTA 7% bonus), the overall waste from the leftover money and lost cards accumulates to $52 million a year. MetroChange is designed to raise awareness of this and suggest a platform for channeling the money that people are discarding to serve a good cause.

The day-to-day encounter with the leftover change and later - information, that there is about $52million dollars that are discarded this way yearly in NYC. There should be a way to make people aware of this fact and use this information to change things for the better.