I’m sure they will put the money to good use . . . errrr, maybe not.

(AP) The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering adding on a ‘green fee’ on each new MetroCard to encourage riders to recycle their cards.

The proposal for the $1 surcharge was contained in the agency’s preliminary budget for next year.

The aim is to reduce the number of cards that are printed and discarded.

The surcharge would produce about $18 million a year for the MTA.

The agency prints and encodes an average of 160 million MetroCards a year at a cost of about $9.5 million. Printing fewer cards will save the MTA about $2 million.

This isn’t the first time the cash-strapped MTA has proposed this fee. In 2010, the mass transit agency considered a $1 surcharge on new MetroCards to help close an $800 million budget shortfall.