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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#101

Post by monkeycantype »

eru wrote: post #81
rladd wrote: post #53

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

That's a bit silly. Bottle deposit are there to incentivise some people to return them. They just need to be high enough to do that.

I disagree. If the amount is low enough that it only incentivises people that are desperate, you are at arms length hiring people at poverty wages. I agree that we seem to have such low expectations of our society, that wanting something better than that seems fanciful and foolish.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#102

Post by alibarber »

dmurray wrote: post #93
mft_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…which is easy enough to fix with bar codes. This is how it works in Germany. You pay a deposit on every bottle. To get your money back requires a machine to recognise each bottle/can as legitimate, based on the bar code. Now, yes, people could print stickers with fake bar codes on… but I don’t think that would work well at the scale of the major fraud operation you’re envisaging…

Do they use a different bar code on bottles sold in Germany to those sold by the same producer in bordering countries? That's something American producers generally don't do for different states (yet?) - they use the same label and write the relevant deposit amount for every state on the bottle.

From my experience of Denmark -> Finland, yes.

There’s a beer I like that’s cheaper and easier to order direct from the Danish brewery than buy from the alcohol monopoly in Finland. The cans look identical. Of course I tried putting them in the return machine, but it would not credit them (although they’ll still take them in for recycling)

People also buy huge quantities of beer personally from Estonia (2 hr boat ride, nice day trip) and the system would probably collapse in a day if they paid for cans from anywhere.

I crush any that I know won’t give money before putting them with the household metal recycling collection as I don’t want some poor soul wasting their time fishing them out and returning them.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#103

Post by schwartzworld »

mbreese wrote: post #96
midasuni wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it had kept up with inflation a 45c bottle including 10c deposit in 1980 would be $1.52 including 33c deposit today Instead it’s about $2

The math a bit tougher than that. The volume of soda bottles is different now than in 1980. And most bottles aren’t glass, but plastic. Even the glass ones use different glass and cans use different amounts of aluminum. I agree that deposit values haven’t kept pace, but there are more variables at play.

I doubt the volume of the soda bottle affects the cost to the manufacturer much. Soda prices are rarely linear to their size. At my local supermarket a 2-liter bottle from the aisle is typically cheaper than a 20oz from the fridge by the register.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#104

Post by kebman »

gnicholas wrote: post #80
gambiting wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of drinks largely hasn't increased in line with inflation, so you'd very quickly arrive at an unsustainable situation where returning a can/bottle would give you more money than it cost you to buy it.

It can never give you more than it cost — the redemption value gets added to the cost of the beverage. So a $1 bottle of Coke would cost $1.05 if the redemption value were 5¢ And it would cost $1.50 if the redemption value were 50¢. The reason the redemption value has not gone up much is that people would balk at paying so much for the goods upfront, IMO. Adding 20¢ per can would add nearly $5 to the cost of a 24-pac…

‘It is incredible what people can pay in tax if they just get used to it.’

— Erik Brofoss, former Norwegian minister of finance and director of the IMF.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#105

Post by Aissen »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #88
rladd wrote: post #53

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different…

Saw that at your neighboor's in Copenhagen, and after the first outrage of paying +50cts per drink, I understood that I was seeing a glimpse the future… If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it.

Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#106

Post by laputan_machine »

tomnipotent wrote: post #48

My father was illiterate, which left him very few options in life after spending his early 20s in prison for check fraud. During the 70s, he discovered he could pick up cardboard and recyclables from local shops and grocery stores and take them to the nearby recycling plant for decent money. By the early 90s, when I was a young teenager, he would use me as free labor and I'd spend my weekends crushing cans piled as m…

The older I get the more I realise the fortunes in my life have such a basis in luck, a chance encounter here, a conversation that led to a shared topic there. So much of my life is based on one or two lucky chances I had, and I know that my life could have taken a very different turn, it is humbling to think about.

This was a great read, thanks for sharing.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#107

Post by bellyfullofbac »

Aissen wrote: post #105
kwhitefoot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different…

Saw that at your neighboor's in Copenhagen, and after the first outrage of paying +50cts per drink, I understood that I was seeing a glimpse the future… If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it. Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…

> Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…

It becomes an alternative form of giving them your change, and you conveniently don't have to carry the bottle home. Although I've lived in a city where an old lady was known to roam the parks and was very pushy about wanting you to surrender your bottles.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#108

Post by EE84M3i »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #88
rladd wrote: post #53

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different…

>Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return

How does this work for convenience stores or other non-supermarkets that incidentally sell drinks in cans/bottles? They have to have a machine?

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#109

Post by lampe3 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #99
eru wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the German system is a bit silly, too. The Einwegpfand was supposed (I guess?) to make Einwegflaschen go away and promote Mehrwegflaschen. As far as I can tell, retail outlets just got good at crushing Einwegflaschen. An investment in capability that benefitted basically no one.

> An investment in capability that benefitted basically no one. There is a benefit: You rarely find plastic bottles and beer cans in the environment any more.

Really? I live in Hamburg, Germany. The amount of broken glass bottles is amazing...

I lived in Hamburg for almost 30 years, but the city was never dirtier than it is right now.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#110

Post by bouvin »

EE84M3i wrote: post #108
kwhitefoot wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different…

>Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return How does this work for convenience stores or other non-supermarkets that incidentally sell drinks in cans/bottles? They have to have a machine?

At least here in Denmark, they very often do. If they do not, you can just hand the empty to the shopkeeper and they will reimburse you.
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