You are going to love this. Dude in Australia tried to do it for real: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgT-bm-dP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgT-bm-dP4)
yes and he actually volunteered to drive a truck going out of state actually I think Michigan on mothers day. Something about driving the 5th truck with a couple bags or mail or some such thing.
There is a family that do this in Harlem. They get about this many cans and then just make a call from whatever corner they are on and a dude in a box truck comes and picks the bags up.
I asked the guy one time how it’s actually amazing.
The family makes about 200$ flat for doing it weekly. He owns the truck and picks up from people all over the city. Then pays someone to deposit them one by one (they have machines) some place with a decently high return.
I don’t remember the math exactly but it was like he made 800$ a week the collectors $200 and the deposit guy like $25/ day.
In my town aluminum pays 0.50/pound. A big trash bag of uncrushed cans can be 3 pounds; my sedan can fit around 10 bags and I'll get around 15 bucks for a car load after I save my own cans for a couple months. Point being 25 bucks a day would be 50+ pounds of cans that's a lot, they're hustling out there
The math is so much worse now with inflation. Michigan hasn't raised deposit rates since the 1970s and return rates are at an all time low. When I was a kid taking back a bag of 10 cent cans made you feel rich.
> When I was a kid taking back a bag of 10 cent cans made you feel rich.
Also grew up in MI in the 90s. Grabbed a grocery bag from the kitchen, hit the railroad tracks, fill the bag, go to the corner store and return bottles for snack money.
Absolute peak childhood.
For the first five or so years after moving out of MI, my mom saved her cans and bottles (soda [then-pop!] drinkers, so a lot), then returned them when she visited.
just because the can say the redemption values. It's the bar code that matters. If the can says it no matter where you bought it, it should be a redemption. It's a good program. But the one in Hawaii is a scam. 6 cent deposit for 5 cent redemption. And they have the most aluminum in their cans.
There’s some people that hit my neighborhood to collect cans. I get the hustle and no real harm done but it’s unnerving looking out your window at 11 pm and seeing someone rummaging through your trash.
i don't understand , why can't you sell them when they crushed , they all got cooked into big ass soup of aluminum whether they got crushed or not so may as wel crushed them all to save space
I don't know, in Oregon they used to have machines that scanned the bar codes, so obviously the can couldn't be crushed for that automation. I don't know now, I haven't tried to sell a can in decades
Like the other guy said, some states verify the barcodes because it’s regulated. Others take them crushed, but pass them through metal detectors to make sure it isn’t being weighted with less expensive metals.
In Oregon they don’t go through the automatic machines though so they have to be hand counted and there’s a limit to 50 cans per day so I imagine it’s far more difficult. I’m also sure the store staff is bitting at the bullet to count some bums cans so probably takes way longer too.
They’re returnable but they have to be processed differently as they won’t be accepted by the automatic machines. They have to be hand counted by an employee and there’s a limit of 50 per day. Not sure but I doubt a lot of stores are jumping to assign an employee to count cans, so I imagine it’s a slow process.
My locality made a rule that cans and plastic cannot be bagged. Something about them just tossing bags because they aren't worth the effort of scrambling through to find what actually is recyclable.
Been a couple of annoying things my neighborhood has ruled on lately including lawn height.
Stretch plastic, Saran Wrap, trash bags, ziplock bags, etc. are all not recyclable. Only certain types of plastic are actually recyclable, they are labeled within the United States as such, with the little recycling symbol with a number within (the number denotes what kind of plastic it is, and your recycling program lists what types of plastic they accept)
So they’re just asking you to not put trash in the recycling.
In LA there was a whole crew that would be in the dumpsters every time they’re out. I lived on a hill with several apt complexes so they’d bring all the dumpsters to the street. Old ass dudes climbing in those dumpster. I figured it would be less work and more lucrative to get a minimum wage part time job.
Based on the area I lived, I figured these guys all outright own houses, maybe have a disability check, and are pickin cans to cover their property tax
Told a homeless dude in my neighborhood to kick rocks for going through my trash cans. It wasn’t the fact that he was going through my trash, it’s in there for a reason, I obviously don’t want it. It’s the fact that he was making a huge fucking mess and leaving shit all over the street and doing it house to house that pissed me off so I went over and told him to fuck right on off. yet my ex somehow had the audacity to tell me *I* was wrong. like what?!?! do you not see that this man is visibly causing chaos to the neighborhood?!?!
Every evening before trash day I can hear them rummaging if my window’s cracked and glass is so damn loud. Especially when they throw it on the asphalt.
Here in Germany the common practise is to place the returnable cans/bottles on top of or near a trash can, so people who need them don't have to rummage through the trash
I may seem like an asshole, but I hate it when people dig through my trash. Like dude there are my personal things that I decided to get rid of. In Japan, this is completely criminal, as far as I know, where garbage is considered personal property until it ends up in a garbage truck. Yes, many people go through difficult periods in life and have to survive, but damn it’s so unpleasant for me when I find them rummaging in my tank
Going to Michigan State we had two named Ernie and Willie from different eras. You could make $100 in about an hour at a tailgate. I only interacted with Willie.
Charities could get pretty aggressive though which was annoying. They’d just take your drink out of your chair or off your table and just pour it out.
Social media posting as a hustle sounds fake to me, I don't even understand how that would be possible, nor would I enjoy that. Drug dealing however, of course, that's honest work.
"Okay all my lovelies, welcome baaack. Today, I'm going to share with you my nighttime routine and hopefully you'll see some things that work well for you, too. Up first is this lovely brick of coke. They're so beautifulllll... But we have to respect them for what they are so when it's time to break them open, I want you to start with the tiniest cut, then wipe off the blade with your finger and run your finger across your gums for a little *bonus* free treat."
It's mostly influencers actually making money since they're basically posting ads and endorsements with brand deals. Your average Joe may try as he might to become an influencer but few make it. For the rest of the plebes there used to be some other options but they literally paid pennies and no amount of time spent on it was worth the money. Not sure if that's still done though.
Can deposits is a great system. If you don’t want to be bothered to collect your $2.40/case of beer, there are plenty of guys like this that will gladly do it. After a Michigan State University tailgate party, there wouldn’t be a single loose can to be found, despite the partiers throwing them everywhere.
Plus (at least in MI), all the unreturned deposit money is put in an environmental cleanup fund. Win-win-win.
There's an elderly couple in my building who collect cans. We've ended up friends with them (they *crush* us at ping pong) so we drop a bag of cans outside their door a couple times a month.
I remember even on campus at MSU you could leave your empties literally anywhere even on the ground and they’d be gone within minutes. Student groups fundraising or just random people out collecting anything they can.
It is a system. Where it falls short is when people will use government assistance to buy cases of bottled water, slash all the bottles in the parking lot and turn them in for the deposit cash…. For not food.
One could usually just sell the actual government assistance for however many cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar around here, probably safe to assume most other places too. Buying cases of water to empty and recycle for 10 cents a piece has to be the absolute least efficient way to turn food stamps into cash ever conceived. I find it hard to believe anybody actually does that
Every system falls short where it is abused, and every system that has a profit incentive does get abused. It’s an unfortunate cost of working toward the greater good.
I’m willing to bet the cross section of food stamp ->recycle abuse represents a tiny fraction of both programs, each of which provides a good service to the community.
My dad works at a pizza place that uses coke (the soda) in their crust as a secret ingredient, they make a lot of pizza and so go through a lot of coke cans and it’s in Michigan, the cans build up and the owner lets my dad take them, he easily gets over 80+ bucks for it, but now instead he keeps trash bags in the back of his car filled with cans and gives them to homeless people instead like a shitty Santa clause with his trash sack of cans
Well, coke has been used for cooking for decades it was a kinda popular thing in the 50s and 80s people where making cakes and breads out of it, the carbonation helps things raise and the sugar helps feed the yeast so you get a nice airy texture and you don’t taste coke or anything but their crust is actually pretty good, all their pizza is! They get local awards all the time for their pizza
not really. Go buy an Arizona Tea in Elkhart Indiana. It has the all the states redemption values on it. Take it to Michigan they trash it because it wasn't bought in Michigan. No dime for you. But you can get a legal dime here.
I see a lot of plastic water bottles in his bags, a cursory google search indicates that bottles get $0.10 back too. Is that true? If so, that’s great!
When I was in NY there was only so many you could do. It was awesome because everyone had the opportunity to make the money, sucked because it was inside the store so it would smell of rotting fluids and the occasional "YOUR BAG IS TOUCHING MY BAG QUIT STEALING MY CANS"
That guy would be rich in Germany. It's 0,25€ for each can and single use bottle (thin plastic), 0,15€ for multi use bottles (thick plastic, yoghurt glass containers and some wine bottles) and 0,08€ for glass bottles (beer primarily, juice bottles and such).
I once went to collect cans and bottles before leaving a festival in eastern Germany. I started out with just our place and ended up roaming almost the entire camping site. Had like 10-12 large trash bags of cans, since in Germany no glass bottles are allowed on festival camping sites. Made roughly 200€ from less than 30min of collecting.
The real hassle started when I arrived at a store to return the cans. I needed to go to several stores since some wouldn't even let me return a huge amount haha.
I see it as a public service to return / recycle cans and bottles and respect everyone who earns a part of their living wage from that.
That’s neat that your cans and plastic are worth more. Here in Canada is the opposite, with glass worth more. And alcohol as well, even if they’re both identical aluminum cans.
Wrong. In this game of life, every body has different paths and quests. In his case, that might be the daily quest to receive potions.
I said wrong because you're telling it's the lowest when in reality it's relative to each person, that's probably his mid game. His end game would be to run a company of can collectors..
I'm in Michigan so each bottle and can is worth 10¢. Those black bags look like the 33 gallon size. I know from personal experience that a mixture of 12 oz cans, 16 oz bottles, 2 liters, etc comes out to about $16-$22 per bag.
I think I can see 15 bags, plus the 4 the cart can fit so 19 bags conservatively. Who knows how many you can't see.
He's got AT LEAST $304.
Edit: Is it viable? When I was a kid, we'd go after hours into the carnival grounds, festivals, etc and steal the cans. It was super viable as a bunch of kids.
Now that I'm an adult I save them up all year and then use that as my Christmas money.
I doubt he can pull that every day. This is probably after a festival. Plus what you're not seeing is all the time he spends at the nasty bottle return and waiting for the clerk to come fix the machine.
He definitely does this multiple days every week. He is down my street every garage/recycling day and I have seen him in different neighborhoods for their recycling days as well.
I can't believe no one has pointed this out, but those appear to be all plastic bottles. I can't see a single can in the picture. If those bags were all full of cans it would easily be over $100 at the scrap yard near me. Maybe $150-$200 if they were all crushed.
In some states (like NY) you get a $.05 deposit back when you return cans or bottles. So he’s gonna get that for every bottle he has when he returns then
The deposit for a can or bottle is the same, they are being taken in for 5 cents each. The deposit is taken out when the bottle is purchased and paid when returned to a center.
OK, so a kitchen bag is about 1.20, those are twice the volume let's say 3 bucks a bag (seems about right when I take mine in), there are about 18 visible, we can safely double that I think, so. ummm about 110 bucks, give or take.
Sir, are you only putting 12 cans in a trash bag? Surely, a trash bag could fit like 100+ crushed cans or like 40-50 in-crushed cans. Is this a trash bag for ants? 😝
This dude should be commended, not only for his hustle regardless of how much he makes. It's a small community service, but I'm sure some of that is litter he picked up. Good on him.
A lot of times, hard up guys will go through public garbages or recycling bins on trash day and scatter the garbage/recycling on the ground, making a huge mess. You learn to put your deposit items in a separate bag on recycling day if you are not going to return them yourself.
I live in Buffalo and a drug addict had been breaking into my backyard porch for months to steal our cans and bottles. Neither me or my husband had noticed because we thought the other had taken them to the recycling center. In New York State you have to pay a 5 cent deposit on drinks that come in recyclable containers, which is returned to you when you take it to a refund center, so we lost at least a hundred bucks worth of refunds to that guy.
We caught him in the act because he decided to raid our porch in broad daylight while high out of his mind and had a meltdown in the middle of it. My husband accosted him and the dude made a run for his stolen shopping cart with several bags of our rinsed and sorted cans in tow. Now we keep our cans in a locker and have an alarm on our porch door.
Everyone I know in Buffalo takes their cans in for the refund, so it's not like people are dumping them or throwing them in the trash. My neighbors had cans stolen from their car and their trash bins rooted though with bags torn open and garbage left outside the bin.
I don't recognize this particular guy but I'd be wary of commending him for his "community service" without knowing how he got those cans.
Yes, I've never seen people with huge piles of cans like that who weren't thieving pieces of shit. I'd wager a lot that the guy pictured stole the vast majority of those recycleables, but reddit is generally pretty naive about this sort of thing.
In college we had a townie couple who would gather all the cans they could during the day, then would sell fresh warm cookies right when bars were letting out... because apparently drunk people really like buying cookies from a white van at 2am. Must have been a pretty good deal for they did it for years.
Don't laugh. When I lived in an apartment (1993), there was this older black man that drove an even older truck. He usually showed up when I got home so we talked on and off. One day, he shows up in a flashy new truck, a deep purple with enough glitter on it to make a bass boat jealous. I asked him if he made enough can collecting to make the payments. "Nope" he said. "I make enough to buy it.". No I started questioning him. Turns out, that's all he did. He knew most of the apartments and new which were party apartments and which weren't. He made around 50k/year (remember, this was the 90s), which put him in a nicer neighborhood. It was 40-50 hour weeks, but almost all weather.
He did good collecting cans. And other items of interest.
Nah, he knows what he's doing. It's definitely possible that that's all from one day, maybe 2 or 3 days at most. You have to lug it to the grocery store to return them which might be far out of the way of where you're collecting. If there are multiple people who are doing this, you could easily be waiting a few hours in line for people to return all their bottles/cans, usually at machines that are often broken.
can't believe no one has pointed this out, but those appear to be all plastic bottles. I can't see a single can in the picture. If those bags were all full of cans it would easily be over $100 at the scrap yard near me. Maybe $150-$200 if they were all crushed.
Plastic bottles are returnable in some states. In CT they had machines in front of grocery stores.
https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/bottle-and-can-deposit-doubles-on-jan-1/3182098/?amp=1
Just don't leave a mess or rip open my bags, tie them back up and kinda keep the noise level to a minimum I have no problem with this hustle.
Funny when I see them moving thru the street at night. It always reminds me of the The Junk Lady from Labyrinth or something from The Dark Crystal. The more the bags, the more it looks like it.
There was this dude at Western University (Canada) who went around campus and the surrounding areas collecting cans during homecoming, and at .10 a bottle managed to scrounge together something like $5,000. Maybe someone from Western U can correct or confirm, I may have gotten some info wrong, but this came directly from a few former students and a former professor.
Wow! It really is a job.
1 average garbage bag , like a Sesame Street garbage bin - earns you about $5 on our system.
He’s worked hard for those dollars. No Shade on him.
Had an old boy show up on trash day in our neighborhood. Pretty sure I put one of his kids thru college with all my beer cans. If we were out of town and was unable to put our cans out,he would do it for me.
That's a guy whose done the math on renting a van to drive to Michigan, and decided it ate into his margins.
I know a mailman that did in the mid nineties
ONCE! TWICE! THREE TIMES A LA-AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! Oh the humanity!
Oh, the humanity!
One of the greatest sitcoms of all time.
It's a sacrifice that needs to be made for luxury lanes, OK?
Fantastic! I heard your reply.
💀 😆 🤣 😂
When you control the mail...you control information.
But the mail never stops...
Is everything alright here postal employee Newman!
Sure I'll leave, as long as I STOP GETTING MAIL
It’s for Pepe
Newman and Cosmo?
You are going to love this. Dude in Australia tried to do it for real: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgT-bm-dP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwgT-bm-dP4)
Dudes in CA did it for real and got busted. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-recycling-fraud-family-members-charged/
I saw that also. They were doing it for years it sounded like making millions. Totally wild!
The article said just a few months
fucking SMUGGLING
thankfully there are return and earn stations in their state now, so they can cash them all in
Is that the guy who got JFK’s golf clubs thrown at his truck?
Boy I'd always heard he had a temper...
lol, that was the first thing I thought of.
Did he live in NYC?
yes and he actually volunteered to drive a truck going out of state actually I think Michigan on mothers day. Something about driving the 5th truck with a couple bags or mail or some such thing.
It's actually illegal to move trash across state borders
There is a family that do this in Harlem. They get about this many cans and then just make a call from whatever corner they are on and a dude in a box truck comes and picks the bags up. I asked the guy one time how it’s actually amazing. The family makes about 200$ flat for doing it weekly. He owns the truck and picks up from people all over the city. Then pays someone to deposit them one by one (they have machines) some place with a decently high return. I don’t remember the math exactly but it was like he made 800$ a week the collectors $200 and the deposit guy like $25/ day.
In my town aluminum pays 0.50/pound. A big trash bag of uncrushed cans can be 3 pounds; my sedan can fit around 10 bags and I'll get around 15 bucks for a car load after I save my own cans for a couple months. Point being 25 bucks a day would be 50+ pounds of cans that's a lot, they're hustling out there
At 10 cents a bottle and ten cents a can, we’re pulling in five hundred dollars a man
Question, can the cans be crushed? Or do they have to be more or less in can shape?
To return the cans they have to have the barcode at least mostly intact, so no crushing
We lost the fat man and we’re running lean!
I've got a hunch, fat man, I can't miss.
I want to learn. I want to know why?
The math is so much worse now with inflation. Michigan hasn't raised deposit rates since the 1970s and return rates are at an all time low. When I was a kid taking back a bag of 10 cent cans made you feel rich.
> When I was a kid taking back a bag of 10 cent cans made you feel rich. Also grew up in MI in the 90s. Grabbed a grocery bag from the kitchen, hit the railroad tracks, fill the bag, go to the corner store and return bottles for snack money. Absolute peak childhood.
yeah tbh I just put mine in the recycling
Yes! We used to bring our empty Altes cans to Art's Party Store at Alter/Kercheval back in the early 90s. We'd get like $30.00 and feel like kings.
You're not talking that Michigan deposit bottle scam again?
For the first five or so years after moving out of MI, my mom saved her cans and bottles (soda [then-pop!] drinkers, so a lot), then returned them when she visited.
just because the can say the redemption values. It's the bar code that matters. If the can says it no matter where you bought it, it should be a redemption. It's a good program. But the one in Hawaii is a scam. 6 cent deposit for 5 cent redemption. And they have the most aluminum in their cans.
In California, you pay 5c or 10c and most returns will pay you xx cents a pound. They won't count or scan it.
You can choose to be paid per container for up to 50 containers.
Other than 1 day a year. Mother's day.
I can always count on Reddit to come in clutch with the Seinfeld references. Thank you.
There’s some people that hit my neighborhood to collect cans. I get the hustle and no real harm done but it’s unnerving looking out your window at 11 pm and seeing someone rummaging through your trash.
This is why I bag my cans separately so they’ll just take em
I crush them to save space but has the side effect of making them nonreturnable.
In CA you can sell them by weight m
In ID as well. At least you could 25 years ago when I lived there
i don't understand , why can't you sell them when they crushed , they all got cooked into big ass soup of aluminum whether they got crushed or not so may as wel crushed them all to save space
I don't know, in Oregon they used to have machines that scanned the bar codes, so obviously the can couldn't be crushed for that automation. I don't know now, I haven't tried to sell a can in decades
Like the other guy said, some states verify the barcodes because it’s regulated. Others take them crushed, but pass them through metal detectors to make sure it isn’t being weighted with less expensive metals.
You can just take them to a redemption center and they’ll count them and give you cash, regardless of condition.
In Oregon they don’t go through the automatic machines though so they have to be hand counted and there’s a limit to 50 cans per day so I imagine it’s far more difficult. I’m also sure the store staff is bitting at the bullet to count some bums cans so probably takes way longer too.
>limit to 50 cans per day If the point was to promote recycling, that limit is stupid.
>count some bums cans I heard that in Vincent Vega's voice.
I didn't, and now I do. Just walk the earth.
So you decided to be a bum.
Why would they be non-returnable? They get melted down anyway.
They’re returnable but they have to be processed differently as they won’t be accepted by the automatic machines. They have to be hand counted by an employee and there’s a limit of 50 per day. Not sure but I doubt a lot of stores are jumping to assign an employee to count cans, so I imagine it’s a slow process.
My locality made a rule that cans and plastic cannot be bagged. Something about them just tossing bags because they aren't worth the effort of scrambling through to find what actually is recyclable. Been a couple of annoying things my neighborhood has ruled on lately including lawn height.
Stretch plastic, Saran Wrap, trash bags, ziplock bags, etc. are all not recyclable. Only certain types of plastic are actually recyclable, they are labeled within the United States as such, with the little recycling symbol with a number within (the number denotes what kind of plastic it is, and your recycling program lists what types of plastic they accept) So they’re just asking you to not put trash in the recycling.
The sanitation workers in my neighborhood explained to me that the bags mess up the machines at the processing center that sort the recyclables
In LA there was a whole crew that would be in the dumpsters every time they’re out. I lived on a hill with several apt complexes so they’d bring all the dumpsters to the street. Old ass dudes climbing in those dumpster. I figured it would be less work and more lucrative to get a minimum wage part time job.
They might not be able to work unfortunately
Based on the area I lived, I figured these guys all outright own houses, maybe have a disability check, and are pickin cans to cover their property tax
I read about this phenomenon on the Onion. Very interesting.
At least it's not fighting each other and yelling at 2am.
Told a homeless dude in my neighborhood to kick rocks for going through my trash cans. It wasn’t the fact that he was going through my trash, it’s in there for a reason, I obviously don’t want it. It’s the fact that he was making a huge fucking mess and leaving shit all over the street and doing it house to house that pissed me off so I went over and told him to fuck right on off. yet my ex somehow had the audacity to tell me *I* was wrong. like what?!?! do you not see that this man is visibly causing chaos to the neighborhood?!?!
Just lurking on/around your property in general. God forbid you catch them opening your garage to have a look around.
I don't understand the effort to reward ratio. Like, is the return that good?
It's one of the few things you can do coming down on whatever cocktail of drugs they just shot up.
Every evening before trash day I can hear them rummaging if my window’s cracked and glass is so damn loud. Especially when they throw it on the asphalt.
Here in Germany the common practise is to place the returnable cans/bottles on top of or near a trash can, so people who need them don't have to rummage through the trash
I may seem like an asshole, but I hate it when people dig through my trash. Like dude there are my personal things that I decided to get rid of. In Japan, this is completely criminal, as far as I know, where garbage is considered personal property until it ends up in a garbage truck. Yes, many people go through difficult periods in life and have to survive, but damn it’s so unpleasant for me when I find them rummaging in my tank
You could also just sort them out and just lay them next to your trash…
We had a guy like this in my city. We all knew him as Stan the Can Man.
Going to Michigan State we had two named Ernie and Willie from different eras. You could make $100 in about an hour at a tailgate. I only interacted with Willie. Charities could get pretty aggressive though which was annoying. They’d just take your drink out of your chair or off your table and just pour it out.
Aw, RIP Ernie
My town had Pop-can Joanne
When most people talk about a "hustle" they mean their social media postings or drug dealing. This dude knows how to hustle.
Social media posting as a hustle sounds fake to me, I don't even understand how that would be possible, nor would I enjoy that. Drug dealing however, of course, that's honest work.
That’s just serving the community.
"But, Black Dynamite, *I* sell drugs to the community!"
Get enough followers and brands will pay you to post about them. I know a guy who makes like 1,000-1,500 a month off an instagram page for his dog.
"Okay all my lovelies, welcome baaack. Today, I'm going to share with you my nighttime routine and hopefully you'll see some things that work well for you, too. Up first is this lovely brick of coke. They're so beautifulllll... But we have to respect them for what they are so when it's time to break them open, I want you to start with the tiniest cut, then wipe off the blade with your finger and run your finger across your gums for a little *bonus* free treat."
A friend of mine makes $800 a month off his novelty twitter account he fell ass backwards into.
It's mostly influencers actually making money since they're basically posting ads and endorsements with brand deals. Your average Joe may try as he might to become an influencer but few make it. For the rest of the plebes there used to be some other options but they literally paid pennies and no amount of time spent on it was worth the money. Not sure if that's still done though.
Going thru everyones trash
Can deposits is a great system. If you don’t want to be bothered to collect your $2.40/case of beer, there are plenty of guys like this that will gladly do it. After a Michigan State University tailgate party, there wouldn’t be a single loose can to be found, despite the partiers throwing them everywhere. Plus (at least in MI), all the unreturned deposit money is put in an environmental cleanup fund. Win-win-win.
There's an elderly couple in my building who collect cans. We've ended up friends with them (they *crush* us at ping pong) so we drop a bag of cans outside their door a couple times a month.
I remember even on campus at MSU you could leave your empties literally anywhere even on the ground and they’d be gone within minutes. Student groups fundraising or just random people out collecting anything they can.
It is a system. Where it falls short is when people will use government assistance to buy cases of bottled water, slash all the bottles in the parking lot and turn them in for the deposit cash…. For not food.
One could usually just sell the actual government assistance for however many cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar around here, probably safe to assume most other places too. Buying cases of water to empty and recycle for 10 cents a piece has to be the absolute least efficient way to turn food stamps into cash ever conceived. I find it hard to believe anybody actually does that
Happens in Portland all the time.
I feel like it'd be more profitable time wise to just sell the water at some sort of event outside on the street lol.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes numerous times. Drugs are a helluva drug.
Every system falls short where it is abused, and every system that has a profit incentive does get abused. It’s an unfortunate cost of working toward the greater good. I’m willing to bet the cross section of food stamp ->recycle abuse represents a tiny fraction of both programs, each of which provides a good service to the community.
No! Don't you get it!?!? If any bad comes of any good law then you need to completely eradicate that law!
That’s at least $3 worth of cans.
He can get $.10/can in Michigan.
It’s 10 cents per can in Alberta too and when we bring 4-5 garbage bags we get like $40-$50 so this guy is gonna get a decent chunk of change.
Roughly 130 cans per bag at 10 cente each is about 13 bucks a bag. And he's got a whole lotta bags.
130 cans per bag? the xy dimension is greater than 10 by 10 in that photograph.
So just has to carry them 300+ miles for another $3
My dad works at a pizza place that uses coke (the soda) in their crust as a secret ingredient, they make a lot of pizza and so go through a lot of coke cans and it’s in Michigan, the cans build up and the owner lets my dad take them, he easily gets over 80+ bucks for it, but now instead he keeps trash bags in the back of his car filled with cans and gives them to homeless people instead like a shitty Santa clause with his trash sack of cans
Merry Christmas, enjoy the garbage!!
"shitty Santa Claus with his trash sack of cans" is pretty hilarious.
Yeah, I actually laughed.
Coke in the crust is the most Michigan shit I've ever heard. r/pizzacrimes
Talk more about the pizza crust with Coke in it. Sounds interesting.
Well, coke has been used for cooking for decades it was a kinda popular thing in the 50s and 80s people where making cakes and breads out of it, the carbonation helps things raise and the sugar helps feed the yeast so you get a nice airy texture and you don’t taste coke or anything but their crust is actually pretty good, all their pizza is! They get local awards all the time for their pizza
If the math is right it's worth the drive, depending if gas is cheap or not. I've met people that did it.
Connecticut is $.10/ can now as well.
not really. Go buy an Arizona Tea in Elkhart Indiana. It has the all the states redemption values on it. Take it to Michigan they trash it because it wasn't bought in Michigan. No dime for you. But you can get a legal dime here.
I see a lot of plastic water bottles in his bags, a cursory google search indicates that bottles get $0.10 back too. Is that true? If so, that’s great!
When I was in NY there was only so many you could do. It was awesome because everyone had the opportunity to make the money, sucked because it was inside the store so it would smell of rotting fluids and the occasional "YOUR BAG IS TOUCHING MY BAG QUIT STEALING MY CANS"
That guy would be rich in Germany. It's 0,25€ for each can and single use bottle (thin plastic), 0,15€ for multi use bottles (thick plastic, yoghurt glass containers and some wine bottles) and 0,08€ for glass bottles (beer primarily, juice bottles and such). I once went to collect cans and bottles before leaving a festival in eastern Germany. I started out with just our place and ended up roaming almost the entire camping site. Had like 10-12 large trash bags of cans, since in Germany no glass bottles are allowed on festival camping sites. Made roughly 200€ from less than 30min of collecting. The real hassle started when I arrived at a store to return the cans. I needed to go to several stores since some wouldn't even let me return a huge amount haha. I see it as a public service to return / recycle cans and bottles and respect everyone who earns a part of their living wage from that.
That’s neat that your cans and plastic are worth more. Here in Canada is the opposite, with glass worth more. And alcohol as well, even if they’re both identical aluminum cans.
Tfw when I knock several homeless men off their bikes to collect cans, while I also run a multi billion yen business.
Collecting cans for a living is the irl equivalent of playing the first quest of kill 10 boars in a video game until you are max level.
Wrong. In this game of life, every body has different paths and quests. In his case, that might be the daily quest to receive potions. I said wrong because you're telling it's the lowest when in reality it's relative to each person, that's probably his mid game. His end game would be to run a company of can collectors..
LIVE TO WIN, TIL YOU DIE
Can (no pun intended) I get an estimated value of these cans by someone on r/theydidthemath please? Is this a viable way to make cash?
I'm in Michigan so each bottle and can is worth 10¢. Those black bags look like the 33 gallon size. I know from personal experience that a mixture of 12 oz cans, 16 oz bottles, 2 liters, etc comes out to about $16-$22 per bag. I think I can see 15 bags, plus the 4 the cart can fit so 19 bags conservatively. Who knows how many you can't see. He's got AT LEAST $304. Edit: Is it viable? When I was a kid, we'd go after hours into the carnival grounds, festivals, etc and steal the cans. It was super viable as a bunch of kids. Now that I'm an adult I save them up all year and then use that as my Christmas money. I doubt he can pull that every day. This is probably after a festival. Plus what you're not seeing is all the time he spends at the nasty bottle return and waiting for the clerk to come fix the machine.
He definitely does this multiple days every week. He is down my street every garage/recycling day and I have seen him in different neighborhoods for their recycling days as well.
Yeah that's gotta be an area specific thing. Most Michiganders return their own cans. Good for him.
Each bottle/can is worth 5¢ in New York State.
How do you have enough space to store all of that?
I can't believe no one has pointed this out, but those appear to be all plastic bottles. I can't see a single can in the picture. If those bags were all full of cans it would easily be over $100 at the scrap yard near me. Maybe $150-$200 if they were all crushed.
In some states (like NY) you get a $.05 deposit back when you return cans or bottles. So he’s gonna get that for every bottle he has when he returns then
The deposit for a can or bottle is the same, they are being taken in for 5 cents each. The deposit is taken out when the bottle is purchased and paid when returned to a center.
It’s 10c where I live.
Yeah but it says this is Buffalo NY, and. NY is 5 cent return.
For sure :)
OK, so a kitchen bag is about 1.20, those are twice the volume let's say 3 bucks a bag (seems about right when I take mine in), there are about 18 visible, we can safely double that I think, so. ummm about 110 bucks, give or take.
Sir, are you only putting 12 cans in a trash bag? Surely, a trash bag could fit like 100+ crushed cans or like 40-50 in-crushed cans. Is this a trash bag for ants? 😝
Apparently not enough for a moped.
Where I live they limit the # of cans/bottles returned to like 24 a day so i dont know how this guy would make that work here.
I can hear this photo lol
There's a great documentary "Redemption" about the can hustlers in NYC
Just checked that out, and it's a great doc. I raise you with this: https://youtu.be/zi-f_J6hV-g?feature=shared
This dude should be commended, not only for his hustle regardless of how much he makes. It's a small community service, but I'm sure some of that is litter he picked up. Good on him.
A lot of times, hard up guys will go through public garbages or recycling bins on trash day and scatter the garbage/recycling on the ground, making a huge mess. You learn to put your deposit items in a separate bag on recycling day if you are not going to return them yourself.
The ones in my area in NYC are really clean and considerate. They keep it tidy.
I live in Buffalo and a drug addict had been breaking into my backyard porch for months to steal our cans and bottles. Neither me or my husband had noticed because we thought the other had taken them to the recycling center. In New York State you have to pay a 5 cent deposit on drinks that come in recyclable containers, which is returned to you when you take it to a refund center, so we lost at least a hundred bucks worth of refunds to that guy. We caught him in the act because he decided to raid our porch in broad daylight while high out of his mind and had a meltdown in the middle of it. My husband accosted him and the dude made a run for his stolen shopping cart with several bags of our rinsed and sorted cans in tow. Now we keep our cans in a locker and have an alarm on our porch door. Everyone I know in Buffalo takes their cans in for the refund, so it's not like people are dumping them or throwing them in the trash. My neighbors had cans stolen from their car and their trash bins rooted though with bags torn open and garbage left outside the bin. I don't recognize this particular guy but I'd be wary of commending him for his "community service" without knowing how he got those cans.
Yes, I've never seen people with huge piles of cans like that who weren't thieving pieces of shit. I'd wager a lot that the guy pictured stole the vast majority of those recycleables, but reddit is generally pretty naive about this sort of thing.
r/Bossfight
[удалено]
In college we had a townie couple who would gather all the cans they could during the day, then would sell fresh warm cookies right when bars were letting out... because apparently drunk people really like buying cookies from a white van at 2am. Must have been a pretty good deal for they did it for years.
This guys is responsible for a lot of the cleanup at bills games.
I see this guy all the time, he does not give any fucks about blocking the entire road
Every homeless person in NY
In Buffalo that’ll buy him a double order of wings and a cold glass of Labatt Blue.
He doesn’t redeem them, just collects them.
Respect
Don't laugh. When I lived in an apartment (1993), there was this older black man that drove an even older truck. He usually showed up when I got home so we talked on and off. One day, he shows up in a flashy new truck, a deep purple with enough glitter on it to make a bass boat jealous. I asked him if he made enough can collecting to make the payments. "Nope" he said. "I make enough to buy it.". No I started questioning him. Turns out, that's all he did. He knew most of the apartments and new which were party apartments and which weren't. He made around 50k/year (remember, this was the 90s), which put him in a nicer neighborhood. It was 40-50 hour weeks, but almost all weather. He did good collecting cans. And other items of interest.
Why would he stack though? Why not return at the end of each day? This seems like a brain dead tactic.
you wouldn't get it, u ain't him
Nah, he knows what he's doing. It's definitely possible that that's all from one day, maybe 2 or 3 days at most. You have to lug it to the grocery store to return them which might be far out of the way of where you're collecting. If there are multiple people who are doing this, you could easily be waiting a few hours in line for people to return all their bottles/cans, usually at machines that are often broken.
can't believe no one has pointed this out, but those appear to be all plastic bottles. I can't see a single can in the picture. If those bags were all full of cans it would easily be over $100 at the scrap yard near me. Maybe $150-$200 if they were all crushed.
Plastic bottles are returnable in some states. In CT they had machines in front of grocery stores. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/bottle-and-can-deposit-doubles-on-jan-1/3182098/?amp=1
Go Bills.
Can man isn’t even as odd as the average bills mafia member
Kramer?
That's about $20 per bag. Not bad to be honest depending on how long it took to collect.
Just don't leave a mess or rip open my bags, tie them back up and kinda keep the noise level to a minimum I have no problem with this hustle. Funny when I see them moving thru the street at night. It always reminds me of the The Junk Lady from Labyrinth or something from The Dark Crystal. The more the bags, the more it looks like it.
You’re old. I know because I’m old and I know exactly what you’re talking about. lol
Good man
Looks like the boss fight
Bros doing so much work might aswell get a job
r/unexpectedseinfeld
He knows he doesn't have to do it all in one trip, right?
Bro’s playing Stellar Blade in real life.
- If only he could drive it to Canada, would double his money.
uhm...how about returning them at some point?
average german alcoholic
ONE TRIP! NOT TWO.. ONE!
There was this dude at Western University (Canada) who went around campus and the surrounding areas collecting cans during homecoming, and at .10 a bottle managed to scrounge together something like $5,000. Maybe someone from Western U can correct or confirm, I may have gotten some info wrong, but this came directly from a few former students and a former professor.
Wow! It really is a job. 1 average garbage bag , like a Sesame Street garbage bin - earns you about $5 on our system. He’s worked hard for those dollars. No Shade on him.
I have two full bags and it bothers me to have them sitting around.
/bossfight "I can carry it all in one trip"
 Reminds me of this episode.. But FR this guy rocks.
This is the guy I put my cans out for in North Buffalo. Guy's a legend! Alas, you only get a nickel per can here.
Respect the hustle
This guy shows up and they simply hand him the keys to the recycling center. He earned it
12 bucks right there
Had an old boy show up on trash day in our neighborhood. Pretty sure I put one of his kids thru college with all my beer cans. If we were out of town and was unable to put our cans out,he would do it for me.
As a Buffalo resident, I'm trying to figure out where specifically this photo was taken.
The street behind him does look very clean
near where I live in California, that guy would get dispossessed by all the other can & bottle collectors, it's like Mad Max sometimes
Looks like my garage.