A friend wrote an article about a NYC millennial who put herself through college collecting cans: http://bit.ly/2aj0IG7
Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#22I live in a microstudio condo building in SoMA, San Francisco. Rent is ~$2000. It's always surreal to see this old lady with an asian "carrying pole" in the elevator. There's no rent control here or government sponsored housing of sorts. Either the lady makes a lot of money doing this (doubtful), or some generous person is letting her live for free (these are ~100 square feet microstudios, barely space to roommate),…
She is probably doing it because she likes the work. She feels good earning a bit of money even if she doesn't really need it. The sense of fulfillment is probably worth a lot more than the actual monetary value. Lots of us derive happiness from work or from feeling useful. I know at least one old timer (early eighties) that gets really happy when heading over to exchange his bag of aluminum cans. He lives in his dau…
Indeed they live with family and the can money go to gambling at all those Chinese seniors clubs. A woman who used to clean out the cans here now hires other women to do it and runs a little recycling empire that ends up on the Mahjong table.
There's also a culture of no waste from that generation my friend's grandmother was more than wealthy but refused to eat with plates snacking with newspaper plates she made and grew a large crop of food in their front yard selling it to corner stores every year. She also would dig out clothing out of trash bins, wash and slice up the fabric to sew different clothes she also sold but didn't need to being fairly wealthy.
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
She is probably doing it because she likes the work. She feels good earning a bit of money even if she doesn't really need it. The sense of fulfillment is probably worth a lot more than the actual monetary value. Lots of us derive happiness from work or from feeling useful. I know at least one old timer (early eighties) that gets really happy when heading over to exchange his bag of aluminum cans. He lives in his dau…
Indeed they live with family and the can money go to gambling at all those Chinese seniors clubs. A woman who used to clean out the cans here now hires other women to do it and runs a little recycling empire that ends up on the Mahjong table. There's also a culture of no waste from that generation my friend's grandmother was more than wealthy but refused to eat with plates snacking with newspaper plates she made and…
Yeah, and they turn into a coven of witches and alchemists when the clock strikes midnight. The fucking imagination and stereotypes of some people...
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#24Perhaps "June For" has something to do with 6/4?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of...
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#25Many immigrants, before they come to the US, hear that America is a land of opportunity, and that money is on the ground just waiting to be picked. These bottle pickers may not have started companies or become doctors, but they're still trying to live that opportunity and not letting it go to waste. Literally picking money off the ground, pure and simple, in spite of some casting shame or bad stereotypes on them. Not many can handle the discards at the bottom of the food chain.
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#26We have had some interesting run-ins with scrap collectors. In part because Sunnyvale (or at least their garbage contractor) uses the proceeds from the the sale of recyclables to offset costs of collection. Thus when someone raids the recycle bin for the cans and bottles, it takes money away from the garbage company that was nominally discounting garbage fees based on expected returns. The city council made an ordina…
they would have done that anyways. they also take discarded cardboard boxes and other re-usables.
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To the city they're a nuisance, because they take recycling money out of the pocket of the municipality. For the metal cans, maybe, but minimally for the bottles. Scrap glass isn't worth much, but the ones the bottle ladies' returns get refilled, which is far less energy-intensive than recycling.
Wouldn't the city be able to collect the bottle deposit too? I'm assuming 5-15 cents each is much more than they'd get by recycling the glass.
All glass (deposit or not) goes into one smashy-smashy pile, so the city loses the deposit value.
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#28In Ontario (maybe Canada, maybe many countries?) if you recycle a beer bottle, it gets melted down and re purposed. If you return a beer bottle to the beer store, it gets cleaned and refilled, which I expect is considerably more efficient.
Not dismissing the negative issues related to these people, there seems to be potential for them to be doing a considerable service for our communities.
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#29I'm sure this is a common phenomena anywhere with bottle deposits, but everywhere I've lived in the GTA has had at least one of these people. They can be polarizing. Some hate them, some are indifferent, others appreciate them. To the city they're a nuisance, because they take recycling money out of the pocket of the municipality. To some residents they're considered a threat or an annoyance, afraid of theft or annoy…
The nuisance factor for me when I lived in Boston (25 years ago; hopefully recycling has improved since then) was that homeless people would tear open the rubbish bags looking for containers that could be turned in for cash. If even a few people were lazy and threw deposit containers in the trash, the rest of us paid the price.
Where I've lived in boston none of the bottle collectors would do that for fear of getting the cops called. They did dig through the recycling bins, but everything would be back on the bin by the time they were done
Re: Toronto’s Chinese bottle ladies
#30Perhaps "June For" has something to do with 6/4? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of...
Don't put too much thought in that. "June" could simply be a chinese name "Jun". The lady knows few words of english, I doubt "June" is on that list.