recycling, anyone else do it?

[zedx11]

we take the metal from the crates that the bikes come in at work to the recyclers. I also collect the aluminum cans from around the shop. have made some pretty good extra money from it.

wondering if anyone else was doing it for the extra money. found a site that may be helpful if anyone else was thinking about doing it too.

RecycleSpot.org :: Material Results

[6ZeroZeroR]

We(wife and I) recycle, but not for profit. Our plastic goes to a plastic recycling dumpster. Our glass and tin cans go to Fresh 'n' Easy. Our paper gets burned as kindling for our backyard fires. Anything not in one of the above categories get burned as kindling for our backyard fires. B^)

[Idaho]

Originally Posted by zedx11

we take the metal from the crates that the bikes come in at work to the recyclers. I also collect the aluminum cans from around the shop. have made some pretty good extra money from it.

wondering if anyone else was doing it for the extra money. found a site that may be helpful if anyone else was thinking about doing it too.

RecycleSpot.org :: Material Results

Unfortunately it seems like we don't hear enough about it anymore. I am very grateful to all of those who continue to make the effort however. Too often when recycling is mentioned lots of folks are eager to say how expensive it is to transport it and how it may use more energy to recycle it than it does to make it new and so on. We used to do it here but now we don't. At least at the county dump here the steel, wire, batteries, tires, etc. are seperated out for recycling which is better than nothing And we give our waste oil (about 50-100 gallons per year) to one of our suppliers who has a waste oil burning furnace.

Thank you for doing what you can.

[RichLockyer]

Waste oil goes back to Autozone.
Everything else? Wife did the "Save the cans and bottles" thing for a while, and no... what little you get back on them is just not worth the hassles of having them stacked up in the corner until you have enough to make it worth the trip. On a personal residential level, it's maybe a couple of bucks.

The city provides 3 bins for the complex for recyclables, though I don't see too many people making the effort to use them.
44 units (22 2bdrm and 22 3bdrm, about 120 residents) and we have 8 standard commercial dumpsters and only three 45 gal recycling bins.

But the garbage is run through a receiving center prior to being sent to the landfill, so even if the residents don't recycle, much of the material is recovered.

We do have a lot of people that bring their pickups and trailers to the back of businesses and take cardboard that is put out. Grocery stores and other stores that produce a LOT of cardboard waste compress and bale it themselves and sell it, but any business smaller than that either tosses it in a dumpster or stacks it on the ground next to the dumpster for the "cardboard people" to pick up.

[dwayneb236]

We separate and recycle what we can. I'm a bit lax on occasion but my wife is on top of it....

[zedx11]

about a 1.5 months ago I was getting $550/ton for the metal crates. it has dropped considerably down to around $200/ton now. can't wait for the Chinese to get back to work smelting so it goes back up.

shredder scrap was hovering between $190 - $170, last load I took was $105/ton

I've knocked down the bike loan a couple grand and had extra money for other things.

cost of transporting it for me is little, I have to go to work anyway and the recyclers is less than 20mi round trip so about 1 gal of gas.

I usually end up averaging $40/hour of work I put into it. not that bad.

[alstensby]

We have a pretty simple recycle system here where I live. It's all single sort. On top of that, the garbage companies also go through the regular trash as well.

On a side note, one thing I also put out there that a lot of people neglect in regards to the "conservation" model is people oddly enough forget the first two parts of the system: The REDUCE and the REUSE. Reducing can be a little bit of a challenge (tap water vs. bottled) but the reuse we do pretty good at! For instance, when we're done with a loaf of bread, we use the bag for cleaning the cat box! Or, used dryer sheets actually work as well as Swiffer sheets do!

[RichLockyer]

Originally Posted by zedx11

I usually end up averaging $40/hour of work I put into it. not that bad.

That's worth it if you have access to that amount of scrap.
At my signal maintenance company, the boss would sell the scrap himself and use it to pay for "goodies" for the employees... They bought a BBQ and picnic table, bought and initially stocked a vending machine (candy was sold at-cost to avoid licensing issues with the city, so the machine was a zero-profit convenience), and threw a nice annual picnic at a local park with a keg.

[zedx11]

I can usually get the truck loaded and tied down in 45min then about half hour to weigh and unload unless it is shredder scrap then it's minimum of an hour at the yard.

before I started taking it they would throw it out by the dumpster for anyone to take. it has p**sed off the mechanics after they found out how much I am getting from it. they want the money but don't want to do the work for it.

[RichLockyer]

Originally Posted by zedx11

they want the money but don't want to do the work for it.

Tell them they can have a cut of the take commensurate with the level of work they put into it.

[trikebubble]

We don't return the cans for money per say , but we do recycle everyting we can. Our local municipality picks up recyclable materials every two weeks. I figure that we've cut down on what we sne to the landfill by 50%.
We moved into a new house this summer which is on a septic system. This has really made us think about what we flush down the drain eveyr day as well.

[zedx11]

lead balloon mean anything to you?

I just do the work and keep my mouth shut. don't tell them anything. then one of the parts guys has to open his mouth in front of everyone including the owner and ask me how much. I can't lie worth a damn. the owners jaw dropped. I straightened out the parts guy, no more putting me on the spot like that again.

[RichLockyer]

Originally Posted by zedx11

lead balloon mean anything to you?

I just do the work and keep my mouth shut. don't tell them anything. then one of the parts guys has to open his mouth in front of everyone including the owner and ask me how much. I can't lie worth a damn. the owners jaw dropped. I straightened out the parts guy, no more putting me on the spot like that again.

Wonder if the owner is working on a plan to get a piece of the action?

I can't lie worth a crap either.

[zedx11]

well, he hasn't said anything yet plus it's that time of year where you start cleaning out the dark corners of the shop and we are going to be remodeling this year so pretty much everything is going to be thrown out that isn't needed.

I've already taken a mixed truckload of aluminum and steel. the SM threw it into the dumpster so at lunch I dumpster dove.

[Charlie Gary]

Originally Posted by zedx11

I can usually get the truck loaded and tied down in 45min then about half hour to weigh and unload unless it is shredder scrap then it's minimum of an hour at the yard.

before I started taking it they would throw it out by the dumpster for anyone to take. it has p**sed off the mechanics after they found out how much I am getting from it. they want the money but don't want to do the work for it.

Do they also expect you to give them some of your paycheck? If you sold vacuums door-to-door, would they want some of that, too?

[zedx11]

it really gets to them in the winter when their checks are lower. LOL

one of them even goes out of his way to make it harder for me to load it by putting his work in front of the door and having it in a state that it can't be moved. he usually does it about 15 min before I take lunch which, is when I load it.

[bretsk2500]

At home, our complex has cardboard, plastic and tin dumpsters along with the general refuse dumpsters... I don't fool with washing out empty food cans (the refuse dumpsters go through single stream sorting before they're fed into the incinerator), but I do separate out the cardboard/paper and plastics... I have found I go through a hell of a lot less trash bags this way.

as far as "big metal" yeah I do recycle that, though the best the scrap yard was offering here was $320/ton for brake rotors, and I horde aluminum and copper like you wouldn't believe ($2.50/lbs adds up FAST).

Bottles and cans... yes I do those too, but that's just to recover the deposit and I'm going to the grocery store anyways....

[Cruz]

NY does the nickel deposit on anything carbonated.
Also the city does weekly pick-ups of metal, plastic and glass.
The paper and cardboard gets picked up once a month.

When a large bag gets filled with soda bottles/cans we take them back for the nickels.

[Cruz]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

We do have a lot of people that bring their pickups and trailers to the back of businesses and take cardboard that is put out. Grocery stores and other stores that produce a LOT of cardboard waste compress and bale it themselves and sell it, but any business smaller than that either tosses it in a dumpster or stacks it on the ground next to the dumpster for the "cardboard people" to pick up.

Never heard of people picking up cardboard curb side for scrap money.
I take it there are places that that pay for it by the pound.
We have illegals scouring the recycle on the curbs for the nickel deposits, a lot of the time they make a mess of things.

Originally Posted by zedx11

it really gets to them in the winter when their checks are lower. LOL

one of them even goes out of his way to make it harder for me to load it by putting his work in front of the door and having it in a state that it can't be moved. he usually does it about 15 min before I take lunch which, is when I load it.

Got one word to describe them, "JEALOUS"!

[zedx11]

Originally Posted by Cruz

Never heard of people picking up cardboard curb side for scrap money.

yeah, takes a lot of cardboard to actually make any money. I've thought about it but I don't have anyplace to store it long enough to make it worth doing it.

most scooters come in cardboard crates. the floor of the crate is probably strong enough to make a house out of. it's really thick and braced well. anyway, they are pretty heavy, wouldn't take many of them to make some weight.