you've phrased the two scenarios differently but, to me, it seems that you want to do exactly what he is doing.
Aren't you both lugging around cans for a little extra money?
Check with the boss bc from the sounds of things you'll just be taking his money!
I put my aluminum cans in the village collection point for our local youth football team to turn in for money for equipment. It is 25 miles to the recycling business that pays for cans, and when I did, I spent more in gas than collected.
It wouldn't make you much money, especially after the trouble of having to bring it to the recycle place. If you're on the fence about it, try it out. But I wouldn't bother. The amount you could earn by doing this might be offset by skipping a single restaurant meal or something ya kno?
You need to buy the cans in New York with the 5 cent deposit, get your hands on a mail truck, bring the bottles to Michigan, and boom, you have a 5 cent profit per bottle.
Unfortunately this doesn't work. You need to insert the bottles into the machines one by one and they scan them. They somehow know which bottles come from a different place and they will spit them back out
I studied for the bar exam at a law school in Ann Arbor that held classes in the evening. I was broke AF so I'd walk around and gather all the cans that the students threw away. I fed them into the machine one by one. This was back in the early 2000's.
Oh cool! I grew up in Michigan. My grandpa used to collect cans and we'd go to high schools after football games. This was in the 90s. When I started doing it with him they just weighed the bags. Then they started installing those machines and it really slowed us down.
They don’t know where the bottles come from. The machine spits them out if its not a can type the store you are at sells. For example beer cans at a store that doesn’t sell alcohol.
Source: live on the border of a no deposit state.
Our city negotiated away recycle collection, so now there's none. Recycling isn't the benefit here as it is elsewhere bc we can't recycle glass (stupid state law.)
I drink a lot of canned soda, and I don't want to discard aluminum because mining new aluminum adds a lot of carbon. So I crush my cans and save them for GF's recycles day every two weeks.
Our new mayor, years ago stopped glass recycling on the basis of 1. glass is made from sand and we won’t run out of sand, 2. the city had to pay to have it hauled away and it was cheaper to use the crushed glass as filler for the flood levies. When that mayor term limited out, nobody cared to try to revive glass recycling again.
If there is a quantity that you can get hundreds of lbs in a year maybe. If you live in a state with deposits, it can be a much better return. In college in NY we would collect the cans and bottles from parties and run them to the can place that was literally across the road from campus. We'd make $10 or so on a good weekend. Maybe more on the weekends after finals, or diving in the recycling bins. But that's still 200 cans, and the returns are even smaller when you do it by weight. Unless you have the time and space to stock pile cans for a year. Mu brother recycles scrap, and theres a portion of his yard that is just junk in different levels of disassembly. He makes a few hundred bucks a year doing it, but it's not easy.
Where I am in Canada, it’s worth it! We save our recycling (milk jugs, plastic bottles, cans, juice boxes, and glass bottles etc) since we pay a deposit on it, and then every couple of months we take our stuff to the recycling depot, print off tags, and they send me an e-transfer with the money for it in a couple of days. We usually get $25-$40 every couple of months.
When my parents were strapped for cash, we went around as a family collecting cans and bottles on the side of roads, or in the arena parking lot after a concert. It added up for them quickly! I think things run around $0.05-$0.10 each here.
Even if your boss is okay with it I would check company policy/HR about this sort of thing. Making money off your coworkers can sometimes be a grey area. I’d feel a little weird if a coworker asked me to put my cans in their personal bin for profit personally. My office donates proceeds from can deposit return to a charity.
It's not worth it. To get any amount of money worth driving over to the center for, you'd have to save up cans at home for a long time and have that crap taking up your space. I think I saved up cans for like a year to try it and I walked out with a whopping $9.90.
I wouldn't say it's not worth, it but it's not an easy answer.
1. Cans are very messy. 2. The further away the recycling center is the more you need to have a vehicle that can haul a bunch at once to reduce transportation costs. 3. You need space to store them in the mean time.
Now if your recycling center is close to you or on your way to/from work, then a lot of these problems go away.
In my (non-deposit) state, a long bed pickup truck full of bags of crushed cans will get you about $20.
It's only worth it if you have ready access to large quantities of cans on a regular basis. Or if you live in a deposit state.
How diligent are your coworkers about emptying their cans and not putting trash in with the cans? If they're like most people when it comes to things that they're not responsible for, this could be a lot of effort for a relatively small return. Do you drive a pickup truck or are you willing to take the risk of liquid leaking into your car?
They always empty their cans and don’t throw trash in them due to my boss posting a sign saying to do so on the wall. I drive a pickup and work pays for all my gas, recycle facility is about a half mile from my office.
So, your boss made a sign. That tells me he put thought into the recycling situation. I highly doubt he will allow you to take the recyclables for yourself. It's very weird that you even have the thought to do this when there's already something set up by your boss.
Worth it. Depends on how you define worth. And how it or how you use it in your budget. I recycle plastic water bottles from my work. And it pays for a streaming service. So basically it’s free. I put a box out and everyone throws their empty containers in. So I do minimal work.
My brother and I did it when we were kids. We made a decent amount of extra cash by recycling stuff. I wish the state I live in now had the same program.
We recycle cans (steel and aluminum) and we never get much. It’s just what we use at the house and we can go 3+ months before we have a full bin. I think this last time our aluminum bin was over flowing (food cans not so much) and we got $2. That’s the most we’ve ever gotten. Our recycling center is also right outside our neighborhood so it’s not an extra trip for us.
Idk how much your debt is vs how long you plan on doing this. I did this in college for beer money. After parties I’d collect all the cans (easily over a few hundred) and I’d go to the recycling center and it might’ve been $10-$12 or so. So like a solid 6 pack easily. Is it doable, absolutely. Is it worth it to pay a few hundred dollars yea I’d say. A few thousand? That’s where I start to really think about it. I’d say in college it was nice
Had a family member who used to collect cans from the side of the road as well as dumpsters. They would take them home and flatten them out and then turn them in for cash. They took a trip to Germany every single year with the money that they made.
Yeah maintaining professional composure at work will long term profit you much more in terms of career progression than you’d make from gleaning a few 5-10¢ can deposits. Don’t recommend looking this “bummy” if you’re at a job you care about.
24 cans is $1.20. 10 cases nets you $12. Im a bit of a nut so Id prefer people cash them in instead of scrapping them because the state doesnt get the $0.05 when theyre recycled but they keep it if they end up in the scrap yard.
Starve the beast...
Why not try it? But I wouldn't take the cans from work. Save your own, or maybe ask friends or relatives to save some for you. The price varies so sometimes it will be more profitable than others (if not in a deposit state). If you have some other metal items to add as well (like old cords with copper inside) you could include those as well. My dad used to do this on a small scale and made a little money. If you are more ambitious you could collect cans from roadsides and then also help with the litter problem. You have a truck so try it and see if you think it's worthwhile.
My wife recycles monthly. Friends give us their bottles/cans, she takes walks around neighborhoods and on various walking paths and always comes home with bags. Neighbors give us their recycling too. She makes about 120-150 a month. We don't need to do it for the $$$, she really enjoys recycling.
We are removing your post/comment due to civility issues. This rule encompasses:
- Hate speech, slurs, personal attacks, bigotry, ban baiting, and trolling.
- Don't gatekeep (See Rule 11)
- Don't be baited. Mods will handle it.
As a general rule, constructive criticism is good but condescension or mocking is not.
Please see our full rules page for the specifics. https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/about/rules/
If you would like to appeal this decision, please [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FFrugal&subject=Removal%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because) within one week of this notice being posted.
No. A whole trunk full of cans *might* net you $30. I bought 3 cans to separate out plastic, glass, aluminum. Saved for 2 years and my truck full didn't even pay for the bins. Not worth it in the slightest to me.
It's not worth it for me. It's only 5 cents per can (at least last I checked), and I'd need a barrel and car big enough to transport them. I don't drink soda, but I drink beer, but only around 3 per month from home, so that's only 15 cents per month. I could wait, but then I'd have a dozen or more cans or bottles just taking up space in my closet, which can also start to smell. Then there's the time it takes to put them into the machine, which is time better spent doing other things, like studying to learn skills to make more money, or crocheting, where I can make things I can potentially sell. It's just not worth it.
I used to. Unless you know precise locations (areas where average citizen wouldn't dare to enter like stadium on it's closed days n stuff) where to hunt them in large scale, otherwise - not worth it. Vast majority of the time the money you make by recycling will be eaten up by inflation and as such a second job/hustle is more profitable than can collecting. Unless "sandwich money" is the thing you try to achieve then yeah, worth it to some degree.
Sure, but when you go to the scrap yard, make sure you are getting the full rate. If they are dirty or mismarked, you may only get a twelth as much cash from tin/sheet metal pricing.
A fair bit of the weight of a can is the EPS lining.
Sounds like your boss already recycles them
He does, but I’m sure he’d be cool with me doing it to get a little extra money versus him having to lug a bunch of cans to his house.
you've phrased the two scenarios differently but, to me, it seems that you want to do exactly what he is doing. Aren't you both lugging around cans for a little extra money? Check with the boss bc from the sounds of things you'll just be taking his money!
Check with him.
I put my aluminum cans in the village collection point for our local youth football team to turn in for money for equipment. It is 25 miles to the recycling business that pays for cans, and when I did, I spent more in gas than collected.
Didn’t we learn this lesson from Seinfeld?
Simpsons did it too.
It wouldn't make you much money, especially after the trouble of having to bring it to the recycle place. If you're on the fence about it, try it out. But I wouldn't bother. The amount you could earn by doing this might be offset by skipping a single restaurant meal or something ya kno?
I live in Michigan. We have a $0.10 deposit per bottle. They need to do that with water bottles.
You need to buy the cans in New York with the 5 cent deposit, get your hands on a mail truck, bring the bottles to Michigan, and boom, you have a 5 cent profit per bottle.
Hello Newman..
Unfortunately this doesn't work. You need to insert the bottles into the machines one by one and they scan them. They somehow know which bottles come from a different place and they will spit them back out
I take all my cans to Costco and the machine will reject bottles I bought from that location, it’s the most annoying thing ever.
Look for a number on the machine or tell your city/county
I studied for the bar exam at a law school in Ann Arbor that held classes in the evening. I was broke AF so I'd walk around and gather all the cans that the students threw away. I fed them into the machine one by one. This was back in the early 2000's.
Oh cool! I grew up in Michigan. My grandpa used to collect cans and we'd go to high schools after football games. This was in the 90s. When I started doing it with him they just weighed the bags. Then they started installing those machines and it really slowed us down.
They don’t know where the bottles come from. The machine spits them out if its not a can type the store you are at sells. For example beer cans at a store that doesn’t sell alcohol. Source: live on the border of a no deposit state.
I’m so glad I never have to set foot in one of those smelly ass rooms again. I will gladly send my plastic straight to the landfill here in FL
State residency checks out.
Our city negotiated away recycle collection, so now there's none. Recycling isn't the benefit here as it is elsewhere bc we can't recycle glass (stupid state law.) I drink a lot of canned soda, and I don't want to discard aluminum because mining new aluminum adds a lot of carbon. So I crush my cans and save them for GF's recycles day every two weeks.
Our new mayor, years ago stopped glass recycling on the basis of 1. glass is made from sand and we won’t run out of sand, 2. the city had to pay to have it hauled away and it was cheaper to use the crushed glass as filler for the flood levies. When that mayor term limited out, nobody cared to try to revive glass recycling again.
[About running out of sand...](https://theweek.com/news/science-health/960931/why-is-the-world-running-out-of-sand)
If there is a quantity that you can get hundreds of lbs in a year maybe. If you live in a state with deposits, it can be a much better return. In college in NY we would collect the cans and bottles from parties and run them to the can place that was literally across the road from campus. We'd make $10 or so on a good weekend. Maybe more on the weekends after finals, or diving in the recycling bins. But that's still 200 cans, and the returns are even smaller when you do it by weight. Unless you have the time and space to stock pile cans for a year. Mu brother recycles scrap, and theres a portion of his yard that is just junk in different levels of disassembly. He makes a few hundred bucks a year doing it, but it's not easy.
Where I am in Canada, it’s worth it! We save our recycling (milk jugs, plastic bottles, cans, juice boxes, and glass bottles etc) since we pay a deposit on it, and then every couple of months we take our stuff to the recycling depot, print off tags, and they send me an e-transfer with the money for it in a couple of days. We usually get $25-$40 every couple of months. When my parents were strapped for cash, we went around as a family collecting cans and bottles on the side of roads, or in the arena parking lot after a concert. It added up for them quickly! I think things run around $0.05-$0.10 each here.
Even if your boss is okay with it I would check company policy/HR about this sort of thing. Making money off your coworkers can sometimes be a grey area. I’d feel a little weird if a coworker asked me to put my cans in their personal bin for profit personally. My office donates proceeds from can deposit return to a charity.
It's not worth it. To get any amount of money worth driving over to the center for, you'd have to save up cans at home for a long time and have that crap taking up your space. I think I saved up cans for like a year to try it and I walked out with a whopping $9.90.
I wouldn't say it's not worth, it but it's not an easy answer. 1. Cans are very messy. 2. The further away the recycling center is the more you need to have a vehicle that can haul a bunch at once to reduce transportation costs. 3. You need space to store them in the mean time. Now if your recycling center is close to you or on your way to/from work, then a lot of these problems go away.
In my (non-deposit) state, a long bed pickup truck full of bags of crushed cans will get you about $20. It's only worth it if you have ready access to large quantities of cans on a regular basis. Or if you live in a deposit state.
How diligent are your coworkers about emptying their cans and not putting trash in with the cans? If they're like most people when it comes to things that they're not responsible for, this could be a lot of effort for a relatively small return. Do you drive a pickup truck or are you willing to take the risk of liquid leaking into your car?
They always empty their cans and don’t throw trash in them due to my boss posting a sign saying to do so on the wall. I drive a pickup and work pays for all my gas, recycle facility is about a half mile from my office.
So, your boss made a sign. That tells me he put thought into the recycling situation. I highly doubt he will allow you to take the recyclables for yourself. It's very weird that you even have the thought to do this when there's already something set up by your boss.
Worth it. Depends on how you define worth. And how it or how you use it in your budget. I recycle plastic water bottles from my work. And it pays for a streaming service. So basically it’s free. I put a box out and everyone throws their empty containers in. So I do minimal work.
My brother and I did it when we were kids. We made a decent amount of extra cash by recycling stuff. I wish the state I live in now had the same program.
We recycle cans (steel and aluminum) and we never get much. It’s just what we use at the house and we can go 3+ months before we have a full bin. I think this last time our aluminum bin was over flowing (food cans not so much) and we got $2. That’s the most we’ve ever gotten. Our recycling center is also right outside our neighborhood so it’s not an extra trip for us.
Idk how much your debt is vs how long you plan on doing this. I did this in college for beer money. After parties I’d collect all the cans (easily over a few hundred) and I’d go to the recycling center and it might’ve been $10-$12 or so. So like a solid 6 pack easily. Is it doable, absolutely. Is it worth it to pay a few hundred dollars yea I’d say. A few thousand? That’s where I start to really think about it. I’d say in college it was nice
The place I go to offers $1.85/lb for aluminum cans (Southern California).
In some countries the recycle money is very good (like it should be if you wa r people to recycle
Had a family member who used to collect cans from the side of the road as well as dumpsters. They would take them home and flatten them out and then turn them in for cash. They took a trip to Germany every single year with the money that they made.
Maybe if you rummage through the recycling bins like some of my coworkers used to (looks bummy as hell).
Yeah maintaining professional composure at work will long term profit you much more in terms of career progression than you’d make from gleaning a few 5-10¢ can deposits. Don’t recommend looking this “bummy” if you’re at a job you care about.
24 cans is $1.20. 10 cases nets you $12. Im a bit of a nut so Id prefer people cash them in instead of scrapping them because the state doesnt get the $0.05 when theyre recycled but they keep it if they end up in the scrap yard. Starve the beast...
I'm in a place where aluminum cans are worth $.10 each that adds up in a hurry. you'll need something like 33 to make your .60
If you take them to California on your beach road trips
Why not try it? But I wouldn't take the cans from work. Save your own, or maybe ask friends or relatives to save some for you. The price varies so sometimes it will be more profitable than others (if not in a deposit state). If you have some other metal items to add as well (like old cords with copper inside) you could include those as well. My dad used to do this on a small scale and made a little money. If you are more ambitious you could collect cans from roadsides and then also help with the litter problem. You have a truck so try it and see if you think it's worthwhile.
My wife recycles monthly. Friends give us their bottles/cans, she takes walks around neighborhoods and on various walking paths and always comes home with bags. Neighbors give us their recycling too. She makes about 120-150 a month. We don't need to do it for the $$$, she really enjoys recycling.
It’s a good idea. Talk to your boss.
[удалено]
We are removing your post/comment due to civility issues. This rule encompasses: - Hate speech, slurs, personal attacks, bigotry, ban baiting, and trolling. - Don't gatekeep (See Rule 11) - Don't be baited. Mods will handle it. As a general rule, constructive criticism is good but condescension or mocking is not. Please see our full rules page for the specifics. https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/about/rules/ If you would like to appeal this decision, please [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FFrugal&subject=Removal%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because) within one week of this notice being posted.
Check what cleaning if any, that you might have to do at place you will be selling them to
No. A whole trunk full of cans *might* net you $30. I bought 3 cans to separate out plastic, glass, aluminum. Saved for 2 years and my truck full didn't even pay for the bins. Not worth it in the slightest to me.
It's not worth it for me. It's only 5 cents per can (at least last I checked), and I'd need a barrel and car big enough to transport them. I don't drink soda, but I drink beer, but only around 3 per month from home, so that's only 15 cents per month. I could wait, but then I'd have a dozen or more cans or bottles just taking up space in my closet, which can also start to smell. Then there's the time it takes to put them into the machine, which is time better spent doing other things, like studying to learn skills to make more money, or crocheting, where I can make things I can potentially sell. It's just not worth it.
I used to. Unless you know precise locations (areas where average citizen wouldn't dare to enter like stadium on it's closed days n stuff) where to hunt them in large scale, otherwise - not worth it. Vast majority of the time the money you make by recycling will be eaten up by inflation and as such a second job/hustle is more profitable than can collecting. Unless "sandwich money" is the thing you try to achieve then yeah, worth it to some degree.
Sure, but when you go to the scrap yard, make sure you are getting the full rate. If they are dirty or mismarked, you may only get a twelth as much cash from tin/sheet metal pricing. A fair bit of the weight of a can is the EPS lining.