Following in the footsteps of companies such as Dow and Procter & Gamble, Recyclebank has formed a sustainability council to advise the company on environmental issues, strategy and performance.

The company, which rewards people for recycling, recruited four prominent sustainability leaders to be members of the Recyclebank Sustainability Advisory Council, including BSR President and CEO Aron Cramer and Volans Executive Chairman John Elkington. Rounding out the panel are Wendy Gordon, founder of Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet and the Green Guide, and Kevin Wall, co-founder of Live Earth and managing partner of Craton Equity Partners.

Leading the council is Ian Yolles, Recyclebank's newly appointed chief sustainability officer and former chief marketing officer. Yolles' resume includes stints at Nike, Nau and Patagonia.

External advisory councils can give companies valuable guidance on issues that may be beyond the scope of its experience and expertise, while also offering a reality-check for their strategies and products. Dow established its Sustainability External Advisory Council in 1992, for example, and credits the group for helping the chemical giant develop its 2015 sustainability goals.

More recently, P&G announced last year that it had created a U.S. Sustainability Expert Advisory Panel to offer guidance on sustainability issues and assess consumer-facing efforts. its nine members included Anne Johnson, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition Program's director, Stephen Ashkin, a green cleaning guru and past GreenBiz.com contributor, and Rick Needham, Google's manager of green business operations and strategy.

In case you've never heard of Recyclebank, they offer programs where people can earn points for the amount of stuff they recycle, which can then be converted to discounts for a variety of rewards, ranging from shoes and Ziploc containers to pet food and magazine subscriptions.

At GreenBiz.com's State of Green Business Forum last week, Recyclebank's Chief Revenue Officer Samantha Skey described how the company is working to boost recycling rates by targeting consumer behavior.

"We're approaching this as the carrot, not the stick," Skey said last week. "We celebrate what consumers are doing already, and nudge them a little further along the eco-spectrum so they can enjoy and appreciate what they do day to day."

Image CC licensed by Flickr user Mira Hartford.