261–270 of 419 posts
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> 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.
I like these types of stories that show the harsh economic realities of many in America. It was not the case many years ago, when they could become an American citizen by working hard enough. Now they are servants, beholden to the corrupted members of our government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozawa_v._United_States
When was this magical time ?
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The dirty secret of recycling is that a significant percentage of what the city of Toronto collects is not really recyclable; those black take out containers, pizza boxes, plastic bags, contaminated paper products, loose lids .... The only truly recyclable products are aluminum cans, clean paper and clear glass. Aluminum cans and clean cardboard are the only thing that really pays to recycle. If for profit companies,…
What's the significance of the glass being clear? I'm guessing this means that green or brown glass is not recyclable. Why is that?
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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…
I'm guessing the New England states were Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and/or Connecticut? (not new hampshire or rhode island, which don't have deposit laws). My guess it that these machines are only going to be in states with deposit laws, and it's likely the grocery stores are legally required to take returns (whether by machine or human). There are 10 states with bottle deposit laws (which mostly predate consumer…
I’ve seen them in Michigan, though.
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So how much do you want to pay for bottle collecting? When you say "the US has the resources to reward hard workers", in this case you mean everybody who buys a bottle should pay more. Or how would you envision it to play out?
Many places use a deposit system, where if you return the packaging for recycling, you get your money back. This cuts down on litter, at no cost to those who recycle.
Or it will become attractive for more collectors. In any case, it may not be so simple to raise their "wage" for collecting bottles.
During the great recession I had a co worker, a legendary game designer in some circles, tell me he was collecting cans to pay for gas. When he was unemployed he was desperate for any type of work. I was more interested in how gentrification makes her family's life harder. Back when I was 19 you could get a place in LA for 600$. Now same place is 1300$, no matter how many shifts or cans you pick up your not covering…
I own some property and have a large 2nd floor 3BR that can fetch $2500 and its in a shitty neighborhood where someone was shot around the corner the other day. Most 2BR apartments are 1800 and up with 1BR apartments starting at 1300+. People living in Manhattan shoe boxes are paying ~2000+ for 1BR.
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…
I'm from a lower-middle class family.
My father was able to get into computers and video games during the microcomputer boom of the 70s because my GRANDFATHER repaired televisions on the side for extra money, so the house had all the tools for my dad to take people's broken machines, repair them, and use them. This led him to learn basic (and BASIC ha) programming, which helped him get a decent accounting job.
In turn, when I was born in the 80s, we had a computer and, even though neither of my parents were college-educated (in fact, my mother was a high school drop out), my dad could explain programming well enough that I understood and was able to find out I was good at it/really enjoyed it + I grew up in a tinkering household that encouraged experimentation, repair, and tool use.
And now those skills are the main reason I don't have to worry about poverty. Because in the 1940s and 1950s my grandfather fell in love with televisions. That's just luck.
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Nope, the worst thing a corporation can do is try to sell me something I don’t want. The worst the federal govt can do to me is imprison me, or worse, kill me. It’s time we hold these fascists accountable.
>Nope, the worst thing a corporation can do is try to sell me something I don’t want. How quickly we forget. https://www.marketplace.org/2019/10/16/the-20-year-legal-bat... https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/radium-girls-radioacti... There's more. A lot, lot more.
Authoritarianism is the same whether it's public or private. It's about power and leverage.
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What's the significance of the glass being clear? I'm guessing this means that green or brown glass is not recyclable. Why is that?
It's strictly because you can't get the color back out of the glass. They want to make new, clear bottles, instead of just accepting that we could all live with just brown bottles.