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My parents collect cans for a living

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Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#241

Post by gruez »

orangepurple wrote: post #229
carlmr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only issue is that glass bottles are too cheap and heavy. They should at least have a 25 cent deposit as well. Right now no homeless person picks those up, because it's just not worth it. Even with 25 cents there would still be a disincentive due to the weight, but I also don't want to incentivize bottle makers to produce more plastic, for them to lower the price at the counter.

I don't understand the point of recycling glass. Most glass is mostly sand, an abundant raw material.

AFAIK it's because the initial sand -> glass process is energy intensive, much more so than melting existing glass.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#242

Post by relaxing »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #136
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.

> to give the collectors a living wage. Why would this be a goal?

1. Cans need to be collected

2. Everyone needs a living wage

Hope this helps.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#243

Post by pessimizer »

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #211
darkwater wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could have been middle class had they chosen another job. What the effing f? So they "chose" to be poor?

Actually.... Yea. In this case that's exactly what's happening. It's like if you got a job at McDonald's working minimum wage when you were 16 but then you never moved on.

When customizing their character, they should have chosen a different profession than "garbage picker" on the selection screen. To be honest, I really don't know how they found it - I didn't see garbage picker on the menu at all, and I don't even know any garbage pickers.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#244

Post by umvi »

dahfizz wrote: post #234
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…

I live in the US, and all grocery stores I have been to have those reverse vending machines. I also never bother to return my bottles and cans, because it's still a waste of my time. I put all bottles and cans in the recycling, along with anything else recyclable (on the backend, almost everything goes to a landfill anyway. But that's not my problem.) Edit: for those asking, I have lived in multiple New England state…

Where in the US? The US is like 50 different mini countries - I've never seen this and I've lived in 6 different states.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#246

Post by i_am_proteus »

umvi wrote: post #238
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.

> 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 It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc. Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or ev…

Typically these function as deposit programs: e.g. $0.10 per can is levied at retail purchase, to be hypothetically returned when the can is turned in for recycling, effectively creating bounties for the pickup and recycle of cans discarded rather than recycled.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#247

Post by night862 »

umvi wrote: post #238
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.

> 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 It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc. Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or ev…

Deposit is paid by the purchaser, you reclaim the .5 or .10 deposit when you return them for recycling.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#248

Post by MandieD »

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.

Yes, they are different between Germany and Austria, which otherwise share labeling for everything - the water and juice bottles I bought while skiing in Austria were rejected for return when I got home to Germany, despite being from brands also widely sold here.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#249

Post by lambic »

thrower123 wrote: post #114

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.

The people who do this in my neighbourhood don't use a car/truck, I see them either walking or on a bicycle lugging giant bags of cans on their backs.

I try to help them out by separating my cans/bottles into another bag.

Re: My parents collect cans for a living

#250

Post by pessimizer »

bjourne wrote: post #85

Not to be contrarian, but it seems like the shame around poverty is just as strong as it ever was. Or else why are all these stories and anecdotes on the form "My parents collected cans but I made a career and I don't collect cans" or "I used to collect cans but then I got some kind of break through my hard work and now I don't collect cans anymore". It's a lot like depression: "I used to be depressed but then I work…

Because this is pornography meant to reassure the reading audience that quality people will always find their level in the end.
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