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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#171

Post by msh »

strajk wrote: post #145
runj__ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about "respectful" for both parties. Bottle collectors trying to take/steal not yet empty bottles and cans has become more of a rule than an exception in parks in central Stockholm. I'm still very much in favour of container deposit but I'm growing really tired of forceful collecting.

How much is a deposit compared to the full price of a drink? Here in Czechia it's 3czk deposit for ~20czk full drink price and I've never noticed anybody even asking for the bottles, yet alone "stealing" them.

In DK it goes up to 3 DKR for a 1,5 liters bottle of soda that you might pay 15-25 dkr for.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#172

Post by bell-cot »

gnopgnip wrote: post #112
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?

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

My experience in MI* is that a fair number of stores can be rather sticky about returns - "we don't sell that brand", "did you buy it here?", "come back when the machine is fixed", etc.

Conveniently, I live in a large-enough urban area to just take my business elsewhere.

*Michigan, U.S.A.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#174

Post by throwaway0a5e »

rbanffy wrote: post #130
sien wrote: post #7

From the article "Jessica is a proud first-generation Ecuadorian-American and a second-year Percy Ellis Sutton Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) student at Baruch College majoring in business management with a minor in law and policy." Jessia is the American dream. First generation, got to college and writing like that. Lots of Americans concentrate on what is wrong with America. There is value in…

> Jessia is the American dream. She's the one who made it, unlike thousands of others, who worked equally hard, and didn't. No family should have both parents working 12 hours a day just to survive, period.

Who gets to define "made it"?

Did the electrician or garbage truck driver who's parents came from just as much not also make it?

Why is it implied in so many comments around here that anyone who didn't go to college and get a white collar job pushing papers/code/spreadsheets didn't make it?

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#175

Post by throwaway0a5e »

cycomanic wrote: post #125
0x0nyandesu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason HN nerds love stories about recycling even though this family is clearly poor and not making good financial decisions.

Ah yes the good old, being poor is a character flaw. There's plenty of evidence that being poor is primarily due to nothing else but lack of money. But the rich/middle class love to feel superior by saying people are poor because of bad financial decisions.

He didn't say it was a character flaw. It's just context in which to put their other financial decisions.

The financial risk analysis of college is very different when you're poor.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#176

Post by donohoe »

In my neighborhood some people will bag cans and bottles separately from the other recycling and leave them out for the collectors. Another is to loosely and visibly tie the recycling bag so it’s easier to open.

If you have collectors in your neighborhood I recommend these easy ways to help.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#177

Post by chongli »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #32

As they should. About a decade ago in Toronto, Ontario, Canada we actually made collecting cans out of recycling bins illegal. The city claimed that these "scavengers" were taking their rightful profits. I shit you not. [0] [0] https://toronto.citynews.ca/2008/08/07/city-to-crack-down-on...

They are stealing. They’re trespassing on people’s property to take resources that don’t belong to them and selling them at a profit, depriving the city’s recycling program of revenue. And the people I see doing this are probably not homeless people since they are picking up all the metal in a fancy pickup truck. Not only are they collecting cans but also old metal furniture and appliances. This is a business they run at the city’s expense, doing redundant with the city already paid for.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#178

Post by laulis »

subpixel wrote: post #157
Semaphor wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can. The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.

Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany? When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.

There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly.

[1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#179

Post by adam-a »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #134
oaiey wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I remember asking a German friend why people were leaving the bottles on top of the bins when we went to a football match. Growing up in Scotland collecting Irn Bru bottles was something you could do for "sweetie" money. I was disappointed the last time I looked to find out that they have now decommissioned their bottle cleaning plant. Apparently conventional recycling has resulted in the rate of return being too low…

They are planning to bring it back in Scotland, as a more univeral scheme like the GP descirbes in Norway. The timeline keeps getting pushed back due to lobbying from the drinks industry though: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/14/scotland-del...

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#180

Post by dmurray »

unwind wrote: post #111
dmurray wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The EAN definitely doesn't indicate the country where the product was sold. In your Swedish supermarket, I expect you'll find plenty of products with Danish or German EANs (certainly that's the case in Ireland).

As your linked article says, "The first three digits of the EAN-13 (GS1 Prefix) usually identify the GS1 Member Organization which the manufacturer has joined (not necessarily where the product is actually made)"

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