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It's really beginning to make me wonder

armilite
if it is worth recycling aluminum cans. Today my wife and I packed up 70lbs of aluminum cans we had bagged in the garage and took them to the recycling place. We had roughly 15 of those large trash bags. My wife had to put one in the front seat with her. I couldn't see out the back of the Exploder. We had to empty them into these big plastic carts and we filled up 3 of them. We were payed $27 and some change. It almost seems hardly worth the effort. That was about a year and a half worth of cans.
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Comments

9 comments

Date Votes
  • Ditch-Runner
    I think its still good to recycle but the days of making any money from cans seems to be long gone . I remember people searching ditch lines
    even where I use to work some fellow had a contract to buy all the can's from the plant trash and cafeteria we use to keep them as a side line to the metal we would haul in .
    now my oldest son just drops them off at the local recycle center along with plastic and cardboard and so on we some what keep sorted out at least the small community gets some benefit from it and saves room in the landfills

    I think the states with deposit on cans and bottles even put a limit and had to be a resident after truck loads started showing up for the .05 to 10 cent per container got to much from the next state's over
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  • WearyTraveler
    Yep - with the fluctuation in scrap prices it?s probably not real efficient to sell cans for scrap.

    Sure, if you do it to get them out of the environment, it?s worth it. But if you?re doing it for fun and profit, you?ll get neither.
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  • diver-rig
    I haven't done it for years, but Iowa has a 5 cent deposit. Finding a place now days to take them is hard.

    In Sac City Iowa, and Adair Iowa, there used to be community houses for handicapped people, like with Downs syndrome, that ran recycling centers for cans. I would save up for around a year, and drive to either Sac City, or Adair, and turn them in. I would have a trailer load.

    At first, the people that ran it seemed upset when I'd show up with so many, without an appointment. But I always donated 50% or more to the residents. The other 50% would go to the local volunteer fire department, or VFW.

    Now days, the wife just dumps them in a local can drive for a church, or school when we get a bag full.
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  • yoshmyster
    Yesterday I went to the dumps since I don't think there's a recyclers behind the large chain grocery store like they used to? I haven't looked since I know the dumps buy. On the board aluminum cans with CRV (the California scam) was $1.61 a pound. I think I'm still charged a nickel for a 12 oz cans so I'm gonna stack and get "some" money back.

    The one I have issue with is the glass bottles. Found some of this Ginger Soda (Dry Sparkling is the maker) from Grocery Outlet it's 45 calories per serving and comes in a 750ml bottles. So a 12 oz can has more sugar than this stuff. They take up space like no one's business and heavy for small return. I had boxes of empties so I had to go to the dumps because of this. I'd recycle or separate if they stopped this scheme of ripping folks off and put a recycle bin next to the dumpster. Until then I'll dump the non CRV in the dumpster (so they can separate them).
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  • Smitty500mag
    Remember when Kramer and Newman were taking bottles to Michigan for the bigger deposit in a post office truck. :D
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  • US Military Guy
    diver-rig wrote:
    I haven't done it for years, but Iowa has a 5 cent deposit. Finding a place now days to take them is hard.

    In Sac City Iowa, and Adair Iowa, there used to be community houses for handicapped people, like with Downs syndrome, that ran recycling centers for cans. I would save up for around a year, and drive to either Sac City, or Adair, and turn them in. I would have a trailer load.

    At first, the people that ran it seemed upset when I'd show up with so many, without an appointment. But I always donated 50% or more to the residents. The other 50% would go to the local volunteer fire department, or VFW.

    Now days, the wife just dumps them in a local can drive for a church, or school when we get a bag full.

    We have a redemption center here in Atlantic.

    They even take the plastic bottles.
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  • hoosier
    We save our aluminum cans. Plastic items, all go to the municipal recycler

    We are not interested in what little we would get back $$, but what we can try and keep frrm getting into the environment.
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  • select-fire
    Tenants leave all kind of goods, electronics, bagged up aluminum, scrap metal. I give it all away. Last time I took something in to get a few bucks I got a flat at the recycle place. Dump here takes electronics free of charge, our county dump stations take everything else.
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  • armilite
    hoosier wrote:
    We save our aluminum cans. Plastic items, all go to the municipal recycler

    We are not interested in what little we would get back $$, but what we can try and keep frrm getting into the environment.

    We have 2 big recycling carts next to the garage along with a garbage cart, we separate everything but they don't come often enough to empty them. In the summer its okay not so much in the winter.
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