aluminum can crusher

newman fulltimer wrote:
What happened to using your forehead ? :S

Best, most appropriate use of that emoji I've ever seen!:C

My structural engineer liked to try to carefully stand on one foot on top of an aluminum can. He would then carefully bend over and barely dimple the sides of the can to make it collapse. As far as I know he never had to painfully extract his fingers. He said that a single can will support 175 pounds until it is deformed.

Send videos.

In Michigan the last thing we'd want to do is crush an aluminum can or a plastic bottle etc. They get you 10 cents each when brought to any food or beverage store for recycling but the code on the can side has to be readable. Crushing voids it!

An empty 6 pack is $.60 and 24 cans/bottles of empties is $2.40 in your pocket. Since the 10 cents per can returned law went into effect in Michigan years ago, you very rarely will see empty aluminum or plastic or glass cans/bottles littering along a road, in the woods, or in a park. Kids scrounge everywhere like vacuums to find them for the money and it adds up quick. Smart! It works and so well!

I used to crush all of our cans but I had to quit.

It was soda-pressing...

When I was kid (you know, back in 1960's-1970's???) Indiana had the bottle return policy. In 1965 my parents started parking their travel trailer in a somewhat seasonal campsite, (very primitive, no running water or showers anywhere, and dump stations was not even thought of yet), us boys would scrounge around for every bottle we could fine. As that park often hosted different orginizations annual picnics (like Elks, Moose, American Legion), we'd hang around the activities and grab the beer and soda bottles they throw around.

The owner of the campgorund would later take us into town were we redeemed them. Back then, we thought we were rich! Well, a quarter back then sure spent a lot more than it does these days for sure.

Indiana never had a return "can" policy though. But yea, I can sure see, if you live in a state that has the return can and bottle policy, you'd never see one tossed away.

Around where I live, recycling aluminum cans is a "somewhat" trend, but you got to have something like 500 pounds of cans to get that quarter now a days! So, often the "mess" of the having cans laying around just isn't worth it for some.

Some people grouse about the inconvenience, but in Michigan we have NO bottles or cans laying in the ditch. And if someone happens to toss one, it disappears withing a day or two.

Some people grouse about the inconvenience, but in Michigan we have NO bottles or cans laying in the ditch. And if someone happens to toss one, it disappears within a day or two.

DutchmenSport wrote:
Around where I live, recycling aluminum cans is a "somewhat" trend, but you got to have something like 500 pounds of cans to get that quarter now a days!

500 pounds here is worth $925

http://www.ocrecycling.com/recycling-discount-coupons

I pinch and stomp mine on a piece of carpet in the garage.

time2roll,

The national average for clean scrap aluminum cans presently is $.25 to $.35 per pound presently. Lots of loss melting thin aluminum cans (30% to 40% average. That means 500 lbs of clean crushed aluminum cans will only get you $125 to $175. Heavy thickness pure cast aluminum $.45 to $.60 per pound. Pure scrap aluminum bar stock gets $.90 to $1.05 per pound. Look it up!

Perhaps DutchmenSport actually meant 500 cans not 500 pounds which would get you ~$4.80 as an aluminum beer etc can averages slightly under 1/2 ounce of aluminum in weight or ~32 to make one pound. You can look that up too!

I'd much rather have the $.10 for a returned can here as 500 returned cans will get me or a kid a cool $50.00 and no need to waste the time and energy to crush them either!

ford truck guy wrote:
How about using your foot.... free, and no mounting needed..

Yup