The cost of recycling materials
If you’ve ever recycled in your life, then you know it’s a way to make some cash in a pinch. Recycling not only puts a few dollars in your pocket, it also helps out our environment. Metals, plastics, and other harmful substances line our streets. Often times in big cities, we’ll see the homeless with their collection of cans, bottles, copper wiring, etc.
They’re not the only people who are doing this. Many ordinary people from average communities go to great lengths to recycle old aluminum cans and glass bottles. It may look strange to walk alongside the road picking up cans, but you’re helping the environment and earning cold hard cash.
Recycling is one of the easiest things in the world to do. There is a lot of junk to be found in any town or city you live in. By taking a simple walk around the block, you can probably spot an entire shopping cart worth of junk just lying around. Cans are always the most common lying around, but you’ll also see bits of wire, hubcaps, bottles, countless plastic items, etc.
Each of these items has their own value in terms of recycling. Aluminum and plastic won’t pay a whole lot, but copper will bring in almost $1 per pound at most outfits. The current average rate for aluminum cans is around 25 cents, while something heavier like iron can bring you in around 50 cents on average. Not a lot if you only have a pound or so but collect 100 pounds or so, and you’re looking at good money for “trash.”
Don’t think that you’d never find 50-100 pounds of aluminum. We’re not talking about only soda cans here. If you got your hands on some old aluminum doors, gutters, window screen frames, pre-fab building siding/framework, etc, then you could accumulate 100 pounds in one trip.
Larger items like these may be difficult to spot in the alleyways on any given day. But if you scour the neighborhood or town or trash day, then you’re bound to find a variety of items that the previous owners just discarded. And your search is not only for metal, you can also make money with car batteries. Grab anything that you see copper; that’s the goldmine when it comes to recycling.
Apart from the weekly trash day, most towns have that 1 (sometimes more) day a year when they pick up all of the “junk” that’s accumulated throughout the year, i.e. leaves, lumber, washers, etc. Once you know which day the pickup falls on, go ahead and drive a truck around to all of the spots and see what you can find. You’d be amazed at how much scrap metal you can find in someone else’s pile. Another good thing to look for is a construction site.
Here you’ll find discarded copper and other metals. You can even contact a plumber and let them know that you’ll take their discarded water heaters, boilers, furnaces, air conditioners, etc, to save them the trouble of going to the dump. Take these items to the recyclers yourself, and you’re looking at hundreds of dollars for each trip.
