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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#111

Post by unwind »

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.

In Sweden, and probably most of Europe as far as I would guess, the European/International Article Number [1] barcode system is used. It encodes the country first, so yes.

You cannot get cash from foreign cans or PET bottles, since the deposit was not paid here.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#112

Post by gnopgnip »

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?

In MI it is the same, small stores manually do it. You hand them a box with 12 cans in it and they credit you $1.20

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#113

Post by oaiey »

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?

Well, not everyone needs to do a reverse vending machine. Just hand them back to the cashier and he returns you money. Goes that far that when a restaurant sells a full bottle they need to take it back.

We have this system also in Germany since the late 80s (I think) and it works very well. Current incentive ranges from 8ct (beer glass bottles ... beer lobby always has exceptions ;)) to 25ct (plastic bottles)

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#114

Post by thrower123 »

I used to collect cans and bottles. Nowadays I don't know where you'd even take them to redeem them; there isn't enough money in it to justify paying sonebody to sort them; an entire truckload of cans wouldn't pay for the gasoline to drive them to the store.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#115

Post by oaiey »

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 a respectful cooperation. When you party in a park, you place your containers next to a trash so a homeless can pick it up without searching the trash. They basically help you partying hard (and not caring/carrying about the bottles) and earn (by hard work) a bit of money.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#116

Post by Ekaros »

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…

In Finland the deposit is 0.15€ per can. You quickly learn to calculate that out when coming with cost per litre... So it only takes some getting used to.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#117

Post by moonchild »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #77
chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #19

What kind of hourly salary can you earn from collecting cans? I always assumed it was well below minimum wage.

How fast can you collect a dollars worth of cans and bottles?

Say 5 cents per can, and say minimum wage is $10/hour. Then you would need to collect one can every 18 seconds.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#118

Post by gambiting »

lampe3 wrote: post #109
mschuster91 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I imagine the part of the problem is that once the bottle is broken, or the barcode is damaged, there is no incentive to return it anymore.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#119

Post by schmorptron »

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…

That is incredible.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#120

Post by faeyanpiraat »

oaiey wrote: post #113
EE84M3i wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Well, not everyone needs to do a reverse vending machine. Just hand them back to the cashier and he returns you money. Goes that far that when a restaurant sells a full bottle they need to take it back. We have this system also in Germany since the late 80s (I think) and it works very well. Current incentive ranges from 8ct (beer glass bottles ... beer lobby always has exceptions ;)) to 25ct (plastic bottles)

Do the bottles need to be full size, or do they accept crushed ones?
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