Trash 2 Treasure: Creative Pricing Strategies For Profitability

Most people pay for recycling pick-up. My local printer gets paid for it. He has a large dumpster behind his shop where he tosses all his scrap. The recycling company pays him by the pound and takes it away for him free.

Once upon a time, auto repair shops paid companies to take away their used motor oil. Today, several companies sell waste oil heaters so the shop can cut their heating bills and eliminate their disposal costs.

Some restaurants pay a company to take their used cooking oil. One IT company out West pays local restaurants for the oil in computer maintenance services. Then uses the cooking oil to run their biodiesel fleet.

In his book The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow, Rafi Mohammed tells a story about fly ash. Fly ash is a byproduct of coal-burning power plants. Usually it ends up in landfills, but one smart company found that adding 15 - 20% fly ash to cement can produce stronger concrete -- at a significant savings over the cost of a traditional cement mix.

The problem was that many contractors didn't what to pay a fair price for the fly ash. Until one executive decided to mount a strong education campaign pointing out the savings, the strength, and the ecological impact. The result? Over a two-and-a half year period, the company's operating profits have doubled.

Takeaway: What hidden profit-center are you overlooking?