Don't bother with two-liter bottles. They take up as much space as half a dozen cans and are still only worth 5 cents.

This suggests a compromise in the bottle bill expansion debate: Double the rate for large bottles, keep it 5 cents for under a liter.

But I haven't seen a problem with discarded bottles of any size in my area. The combination of 5 cent scavengers, recycling bins, and city street cleaning does the job.

wildcardjack: At least you have deposit redemption to work with. Here in Texas there are people fishing for the cans for weight value and it's about 30 cans to the pound.

Its sad that even Mexico has more forward thinking container recycling than Texas.

*Seinfeld-Newman.jpg*

gingerjet: Thankfully I live in an apartment building that locks up the garbage and recycling containers indoors and doesn't have a porter to bribe.

I have to ask- Why does it matter?  Regardless of how recycling gets to depot, isn't it mission accomplished from your perspective?

I like to call them "gleaners", and we have a few regulars in my neighborhood near Beantown. One's an old wizened Chinese woman, one's a big black guy, and one's a really skinny scruffy white dude. It's a lifestyle that welcomes all kinds.

ZAZ: This suggests a compromise in the bottle bill expansion debate: Double the rate for large bottles, keep it 5 cents for under a liter.

I think they should up it to 25 cents for everything. Soda was like 50 cents a bottle back when the 5 cent deposit was enacted. More incentive to keep the damn bottles off the street.

wildcardjack: At least you have deposit redemption to work with. Here in Texas there are people fishing for the cans for weight value and it's about 30 cans to the pound.

Wow, that's pretty bad, and hardly seems worth it.
Just for the heck of it, I looked it up and there are about 33 cans per pound.
Scrap aluminum is about 50 cents a pound, so in order to make one dollar, you would have to find 66 cans, as opposed to 20 cans in NYC.

Even at 5 cents per can, it's not worth it.
The article says she works 8 hours to make $40, and that's probably not consistent.
There's no way I'm going to rummage through filthy disgusting garbage cans for $5 an hour, no less in Texas, where it works out to about $1.60 an hour.

I have a friend who makes his living doing this and cleaning the lobbies of a few apt complexes. He has some bone disorder i can't recall the name of, so he gets a stipend from the gov't and supplements his income this way. His apt smells though :(

I told my sis she needed to find a job - any job - by the end of the month or the cigarette fairy just might quit visiting her. I also suggested buying her own cigarettes by collecting cans, just in case she didn't or couldn't find a job. I guess I'll have to try and find this documentary for her so she can get tips from the pros.

/also thinks it sounds interesting

offacue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fazZwSyC0eM   Only in NYC, rollerblade recycling.

Step aside! Make way, 7 dollars comin' through here, 7 dollars comin' through!

Oznog: I'm in Texas, we don't do deposits.

I've never seen a "redemption machine", I'm trying to picture how this would work... I mean, the cans are bulky, and often dented or squished.  So is there a magic label or something on there or does it just scan the UPC?  Does it accept out-of-state cans?  Does it crush them internally?

They scan the UPC, which determines the can's eligibility, if it's a non deposit can, it spits it back out.
If the can is accepted, the machine crushes it, and it drops into a plastic bin, which is periodically emptied into a dedicated dumpster, that is then brought to the recycling facility.
Same thing applies for plastic, and glass.

When you are done feeding the machine, it spits out a redeemable receipt which is brought to the cashier, or sometimes deposited into nearby collection jar for various charities.

Refillable bottles are dealt with by a clerk.

You can thank Michigan for the rise of Bottle Bills, which turned our state from a can and bottle-littered mess to a nice, somewhat-clean place to live. Our rivers and lakes improved rapidly. You can walk through a parking lot and not see a single can or bottle.

Last time I was in Ohio, I was amazed by the sea of cans and bottles laying on the ground in Cedar Point's parking lot. If they were deposit-legal, I'd have been looking at hundred of dollars in deposit. Instead, they were dropped there and forgotten, because so many people are pigs if you don't pay them to do the right thing.

Michigan gives ten cents per deposit. I think every state should at least do that much. Five cents is kind of cheap. Paying by weight is ridiculous.

Oznog: I'm in Texas, we don't do deposits.

I've never seen a "redemption machine", I'm trying to picture how this would work... I mean, the cans are bulky, and often dented or squished.  So is there a magic label or something on there or does it just scan the UPC?  Does it accept out-of-state cans?  Does it crush them internally?

They're usually embedded in a wall or bank of machines. There's a hole in the front. You place your can or plastic bottle in them, on a little treadmill, and the machine spins the can/bottle while pointing a laser at it. When it finds the UPC and scans it, recognizing that it's an item the store sells and it's from this state, it rolls the can to the side into a bin where they're all crushed just before falling in. The whole bin gets compacted occasionally, and a worker has to empty the bins every once in a while.

It's illegal to return an out-of-state can/bottle for deposit. Some machines used to let you get away with it, but that is changing. If they catch you it's a pretty hefty fine. If it's just one can, they'll assume you made a mistake, but if you bring in a bag full of cans from Ohio to a machine in Michigan, they'll either reject them outright, or catch you eventually and report you.



When you're done with all your cans and bottles, you press the little button and a paper receipt comes out. You take the receipt to the customer service desk or cashiers, and they treat it like money.

The LCD screen tells you your total, and the machine's status. For example, if it gets full it will make an annoying, repeating beep and flash "BIN FULL" until someone shows up to swap bins.

Kahabut: hat depends, the local recycling company is going bankrupt because there is never any "valuable" stuff in the collected bins, because the scavengers come and take everything even remotely metal or plastic.  So no, it's not all the same.  It means I pay nearly double for garbage service (combined) than I would if the scavengers stopped stealing materials from the bins.  (yes, it's stealing)

They don't come on my property anymore.  But they don't seem to have any problem trespassing to get what they want.  They just learned that my yard isn't worth the problems that come with it.

I guess I look at it the other way.  You also didn't pay for the volume of that scrap to be picked up or transported.

Going to the effort of collecting scrap is self employment, as far as I'm concerned.  Trespassing is another story, provided that you don't consider going through a plastic bin in a public laneway trespassing.  I'd much sooner that people took every last morsel of value out of my trash than have them break into my shiat.

Oh, and if the can's dented/squished, the machines will work only if they can read the UPC. Sometimes, you need to pop the can/bottle back out so the machine can read it.

And yes, you could probably print a bunch of barcodes and slap them on bottles or cans, and get a deposit illegally, but again-- if they catch you, they're pretty serious about it. Major fine, at least. Jail time, if they see a conspiracy to defraud the store.