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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#201

Post by ratww »

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.

Every other month I see old products going from "disposable" to "with deposit". So I don't think so. The latest for me were the tiny juice bottles from Rewe. 25c Pfand.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#203

Post by freeflight »

msh wrote: post #171
strajk wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All these deposits are so low. Germany has 25 cent on non-beer plastic bottles.

Which means when buying a 1,5 liters bottle of water, the bottle is worth more (25 cent) than the water in it (19 cent).

Bottle collectors are quite common, haven't met any rude ones myself, but they are even speed-collecting trough the trash cans of trains stopped making stops at the station.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#204

Post by rndgermandude »

lillecarl wrote: post #197
rndgermandude wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see such behavior here in Germany sometimes, too. Like everywhere else in life, there are nice bottle collectors, and there are assholes. One collector gave me a sticky, wet butt, because he snuck up behind us in a park, "stole" my half empty beer bottle I placed next to me, and then proceeded to empty it out right there. It was one of the very few times I had trouble controlling myself not to hit somebody... I man…

I'm quite disappointed you didn't press charges to he honest, (s)he must've understood perfectly what (s)he was doing and the consequences, yet he still did it. And you're likely not the only person abused like that. Yes there are loads of nice appreciative collectors and they are doing us a service, it's just sad when the predators come and ruin it.

My hope was that involving the cops was scary enough (they took down the details of that person, and issued a formal order to vacate), and that the immediate monetary "punishment" in form of those 20 bucks (which is a lot of bottles) helped too. I felt it was a reasonable severe response to what happened. Causing that guy a lot of legal trouble, aside from clogging up the legal system with not even 20 bucks worth of damages, seemed unreasonable.

Those cops are also regularly working that area (they in fact were already in the park when I called, and I had seen them before doing their rounds), and if that bottle collector violated their order to vacate, it would have had actual consequences. And if he pulls the same shit again, the cops will have a "you again moment", and probably mention that to the next person who makes a complaint and at the very least issue a much longer order to vacate. And since they didn't mention anything to me, I am assuming it was the first time the cops were called on that guy, and we Germans have a tendency to call the cops quite often ;)

It also saved me from a lot of hassle myself, of course, not having to go to the police to give a signed statement, maybe show up in court, etc.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#205

Post by deepsun »

Interestingly, ALL the comments here are about how bad it is, because, apparently, "NO MONEY = NO HAPPINESS".

Yet I've been blessed to live in several countries, and can speak from experience that most poor families I've seen are on average more happy than most rich families, in both US and Eastern Europe. They only think that they are unhappy, because of the constant struggle with money, but I've seen many lives of people to think otherwise.

So I'm not that pitiful towards the author. Their parents didn't have mental health issues, no one got killed or injured, so I'd say they lived mostly happy life, comparing to others.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#206

Post by mattl »

bemmu wrote: post #195
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…

At the large Finnish LAN party / demoscene event Assembly, there are people who go around all the desks collecting the cans and bottles people leave on them. I wonder how much they make doing this, considering there are thousands of desks with everyone consuming energy drinks and soda nonstop.

I once paid for most of my trip to a hacker event in Germany by picking up and returning all the discarded bottles of beer and Club Mate. It took maybe two hours.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#207

Post by rndgermandude »

freeflight wrote: post #198
rndgermandude wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish it was that easy, but it's not. Single-use containers are 25 cents, indeed, but a lot of the stuff you will buy is multi-use, and there things vary. Multi-use plastic bottles and large glass bottles usually have a 15 cents deposit, and small beer glass bottles it is only 8 cents, unless they have a clip-lock (Flensburger e.g.) then it's 15 cents again. Vine bottles are extremely confusing, ranging from…

> Single-use containers are 25 cents, indeed, but a lot of the stuff you will buy is multi-use, and there things vary. Multi-use plastic bottles and large glass bottles usually have a 15 cents deposit, and small beer glass bottles it is only 8 cents, unless they have a clip-lock (Flensburger e.g.) then it's 15 cents again. Vine bottles are extremely confusing, ranging from no deposit, to 2 or 3 cents, to 15 cents. To…

Right, indeed. Glass jars (usually) have a deposit when they are "multi-use", while single-use plastic containers (and some single-use glass ones) do not. I lost many euros thanks to that, because I didn't know for a long time, and dumped my yogurt glass jars into the normal glass collection containers. It would have been easy to collect the deposits, since I am doing that for all the bottles I use anyway. :P

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#208

Post by jimbokun »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #17
arkis22 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait till you realize what's happening in the rest of the world. where people work much harder and still don't get by.

Or, if you take another section of the rest of the world wait till you realize what's happening in the rest of the world where people work less hard and don't have it that bad.

That is a much smaller slice of the world than the opposite.

Even the poor in the U.S. are still better off than most people in the rest of the world. The U.S. can certainly do better addressing income inequality, but there still needs to be some perspective as to the relative opportunity available to people in the U.S. compared to most other places.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#209

Post by jimbokun »

hunterb123 wrote: post #47
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI a great many immigrants were rich when they immigrated. A lot of rich people come to America because America offers so much opportunity to people who are already wealthy. Immigrants from overseas are especially likely to be wealthy. Indian-Americans are the wealthiest ethnic demographic in America simply because migrating from India pretty much requires being very wealthy to begin with.

Nothing I said indicated the immigrants were rich or poor, the majority are poor though. My point was if there's a nicer system than the US, immigrants will be flocking there too. Luckily we have numbers on the rates of which people immigrate to which countries, and the average wages of citizens of those countries. > Indian-Americans are the richest ethnic minority in America because migrating from India pretty much…

> They integrate well and know how to climb the system. They send their children in as doctors later in generations. They don't always start rich, they work for it.

And from this article, we can see Ecuadorians follow a similar path. The integrate well, and climb the system by sending their sons and daughters to college where they can build a better life for themselves than their parents had.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#210

Post by jimbokun »

smt88 wrote: post #16
arkis22 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait till you realize what's happening in the rest of the world. where people work much harder and still don't get by.

"It's worse somewhere else" isn't relevant to whether it's acceptable in the US. The US has the resources to reward hard workers with financial stability. It also benefits from brain-draining other countries with this promise. If the US continues to slide away from the "American Dream," the brains and prosperity will end up somewhere else.

> The US has the resources to reward hard workers with financial stability.

Most hard workers in the U.S. are rewarded with financial stability. Not everyone, but enough that people still flock here from other countries where that's less true.

> It also benefits from brain-draining other countries with this promise.

Well gee, I guess the U.S. should stop being such a great place for immigrants, so talented people stop coming here and stay wherever they live now.

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