aluminum can crusher

I’ve lived in Oregon my whole life. We had the first bottle bill in the country and I know what it does and how it works. Your wording made it sound like a fortune generator with all this money you “get” when you return your cans. You don’t “get” money, you get your own money back. The system got to earn the interest on it. However little for you it adds up for them.

As a kid, I scoured the ditches and collected money for other people’s waste. Now I do the opposite and just give my cans to needy people as it’s now worth handling the mess or dealing with the filth at the bottle return centers.

Does it cut down on litter? I’m not so sure in our state as we have curbside recycling cans that are larger than our garbage cans. It’d be so much easier to toss them in there if not for the fact that they have a deposit that is lost. All of our boxes, soup cans and milk jugs go in there so why not aluminum cans.

wnjj,

There's ZERO loss of money as it's a deposit when purchased and fully redeemed when returning the empties to a food store or beverage store. Just like vehicle batteries and so many other items. We annually have ~7 million visitors to just our local lakeshore area and if they didn't return them for their deposit, (most do) the kids are very quick to collect any left behind aluminum, plastic, and glass beverage containers for the 10 cents each deposit. 7 million visitors is a lot of people and still provides a virtual gold field left for the local kids to line their pockets and they sure do on bikes with big plastic garbage bag full!

10 beverage containers + $1.00 and a bag full is $20 - $25 and is not heavy at all unless filled with mostly glass bottles which are a very small % of what beverages here come in. We know as we return our own beverage containers in a 30 - 39 gallon plastic garbage bag.

Thus, you will not find our parks, roadways, fields, ditches with any of these beverage containers in them and that's a huge plus! Locally and region wide, all streets and roadway areas etc plus the 47 local area parks and beaches and where the public gathers are kept so clean of any debris by street crews and company/business employee volunteers by area sections several times each year, usually monthly. We the residents and the throngs of visitors are left with the very constantly clean pristine surroundings. So unlike what we always see in our 53 years of RV'ing in the USA and Canada, especially the southern states. The 10 cent deposit law covers the entire state of Michigan and it sure works! That's the REAL REWARD! The money gained by the picking up other left behinds is only a part of the many real benefits! WIN WIN!

An real example is the day after the local 10 day National U.S. Coast Guard festival in Grand Haven which has been going on for 94 years now ending on Saturday night with hundreds of thousands in town for the finale in early August and which is attended by 350,000+ to over 500,000 people annually, the entire area is beverage can and debris free and all the downtown streets area are also totally clean too. One of 7 festivals held here each year.

travelnutz wrote:
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!

Unless you’re collecting other people’s cans, the cans don’t get you anything except the loss of your money from when you buy to when you return them.

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

Yup

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It was soda-pressing...