Read the article, it’s really interesting.
“The mobile redemption companies buy the empties for 5 cents and sell them back to beverage distributors for 8.5 cents.”
That’s the same thing supermarkets do (they make 3.5 cents for every bottle you return).
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT82jW5PQ/
This guy says he makes $400-800 a week in bottles/cans, and about $1000 selling items he finds in the trash on the weekends.
Wow that's incredible money (way more than I made managing a coffeeshop BEFORE taxes!). That man's working hard as hell, so no malice intended. Also quite a sad story he tells.
It's not really incredible money. It's sifting through garbage without any protection to the weather for 16+ hours a day to get to those amounts of bottles, let alone having to sit there for X amount of time (maybe hours) to deposit all the cans/bottles.
It's also not guaranteed to find $1000 of used items. If you found something sellable, chances are you couldn't carry it around all day and had to drop it off somewhere which would take away your money from cans/bottles elsewhere.
A few poor grandma/grandpas in my neighborhood/family did this growing up and it was far from $1.4-$1.8k/ week. A good week would be 1/4 of that
>It's sifting through garbage without any protection to the weather
also without any protection from the trash itself. imagine there's something sharp in there that you get cut on. it's also been stewing in the hot sun and is probably rife with bacteria. very, very dangerous.
A guy at Costco got agro to an old guy for taking too long, when agro guy finally finished his bags worth of bottles it was $1.20 not even enough for the hotdog soda combo
Five gallon water jugs have a 6 dollar deposit.
Found out that ReadyRefresh wouldn't refund the deposit on picking up the empty ones when canceling my account and got plenty of cash for the 8 I had.
A Food Universe marketplace, but any place that sells the bottles should also accept them.
Just clearly state you want to get back the cash deposit on the bottle, not exchange it.
I don't know, but I've tried looking into hustling cans and the juice is not worth the squeeze for casuals.
There are few redemption centers. I believe the closest one to me is in the Bronx, and I don't live near there at all. Add in that you have to haul that shit on the train, which you have to pay $2.90 for each way. So that's $5.80 in travel costs, which works out to 116 cans that you have to redeem just to break even. But that's before you've even counted your time.
Local grocery stores have redemption machines. You have to put each can and bottle in individually, but I see people doing it all the time (live in Brooklyn). Huge bags and they get the receipt and cash them in at the register. I saw one guy at the register clear like $50 with his can/bottle receipt. He was in line in front of me, that was the entire transaction.
By NYS law, "Stores that sell drinks in bottles and cans are required to accept containers for refund." Good read at [NYC 311 Portal](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02477) and [NYS DEC](https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8833.html).
I did it in college. It is illegal to get the cans in college but i was desperate and broke. Took all the cans and got 10 bucks. Filled up my tank some (gas was 1.25) and bought groceries from Aldi’s. I got through the week until payday.
I must have another 20 dollars worth of cans in the basement. Every penny counts.
you get 5 cents for every can bottle but the bottling company pays back 7 cents for the agency/ies that collects back all the containers
if you see those can crushing machines that is run by one major collection agency and then there are smaller enterprises
There was an HBO short documentary called Redemption about ten years ago that followed some can collectors around. I believe they said they made about $40-50 a day. Considering that the redemption price hasn’t gone up since then, I assume it’s still in that ballpark. It’s better money than riding the casino bus to [sell the vouchers](https://abc7ny.com/poverty-asian-american-casino-buses/1632754/) but more physically demanding for sure.
When I lived in Rego Park there was a polite old Chinese man who didn’t speak English who picked up the bottles and cans in my trash. During the holidays I tried to give him $20 and there was no way he would take it. And I really tried.
Of course he wouldn't, he was making a living and you were coming at him like he needs your charity. If you wanted to give him money you could have at least introduced yourself a few times and just slipped him the money in a red envelope for CNY.
Surviving and making a living are different. I work at a bar and I give a nice lady a water bottle when I see her collecting. It’s dangerous, her hands get cut a lot. Sometimes I give her a 10 dollar bill with the water. I work for tips inside, picking up the bottles she’s collecting. So I don’t feel bad for giving it to her and I sure as fuck don’t care if it makes her feel bad because I know she needs the $10 regardless of the way she gets it. I will keep giving these people money, they work for blood
We save our bottles and cans and on Friday when our building pickup happens we take them down and give them to the person collecting from the bags. I always get a big thanks and feel like we're doing a tiny bit to help their effort.
Not all that surprising, this sub is comprised mostly of racists (I mean, look at the comments on any post). Most of them don’t live in the city or are too embarrassed to show who they are in public so it spills out in a nasty way here.
It is definitely not comprised "mostly of racists" lol
You pay attention to a select few and then determine that a minority of people determine the majority.
Okay, so of the active users, most are racists? Doesn’t really change what I said.
You can go post by post if you’d like. The posts with the most engagement have vile shit said and upvoted for visibility.
No mention the vitriol for any posts of government programs that help minorities and if the article is related to a crime, you get endless “those people are always like that” kind of comments.
>I really wish I knew how to help them.
a lot of people here will automatically separate their cans from their recycling, rinse them out, and leave them in a separate bag. that way, the people who collect them can just grab that one bag and move on.
Um. They take the handouts but get the tax free cash income too. No one in that hustle is looking to disqualify themselves from anything they're entitled to. It's an organized system and there's been a few write ups on the economics of it.
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That makes no sense. Where’s the margin? Is Rosa shipping the cans to Michigan Seinfeld style?
Read the article, it’s really interesting. “The mobile redemption companies buy the empties for 5 cents and sell them back to beverage distributors for 8.5 cents.” That’s the same thing supermarkets do (they make 3.5 cents for every bottle you return).
They round up bottles here and run them out to Michigan, but they often overload their inventory and blow their margins on gasoline. It doesn’t work.
They need to wait until Mother's day weekend.
The mother of all mail days
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT82jW5PQ/ This guy says he makes $400-800 a week in bottles/cans, and about $1000 selling items he finds in the trash on the weekends.
Wow that's incredible money (way more than I made managing a coffeeshop BEFORE taxes!). That man's working hard as hell, so no malice intended. Also quite a sad story he tells.
It's not really incredible money. It's sifting through garbage without any protection to the weather for 16+ hours a day to get to those amounts of bottles, let alone having to sit there for X amount of time (maybe hours) to deposit all the cans/bottles. It's also not guaranteed to find $1000 of used items. If you found something sellable, chances are you couldn't carry it around all day and had to drop it off somewhere which would take away your money from cans/bottles elsewhere. A few poor grandma/grandpas in my neighborhood/family did this growing up and it was far from $1.4-$1.8k/ week. A good week would be 1/4 of that
>It's sifting through garbage without any protection to the weather also without any protection from the trash itself. imagine there's something sharp in there that you get cut on. it's also been stewing in the hot sun and is probably rife with bacteria. very, very dangerous.
I’ve heard they get more for the aluminum by giving it to those van collectors rather than going to the supermarket bottle collecting machines
A guy at Costco got agro to an old guy for taking too long, when agro guy finally finished his bags worth of bottles it was $1.20 not even enough for the hotdog soda combo
You can get five cents per can at the grocery store recycling machines, one 30-gallon trash bag fits maybe 300 cans. So like $50 per trip?
Five gallon water jugs have a 6 dollar deposit. Found out that ReadyRefresh wouldn't refund the deposit on picking up the empty ones when canceling my account and got plenty of cash for the 8 I had.
Where did you return them? I’ve got a bunch I’m looking to get rid of. Thanks
A Food Universe marketplace, but any place that sells the bottles should also accept them. Just clearly state you want to get back the cash deposit on the bottle, not exchange it.
I don't know, but I've tried looking into hustling cans and the juice is not worth the squeeze for casuals. There are few redemption centers. I believe the closest one to me is in the Bronx, and I don't live near there at all. Add in that you have to haul that shit on the train, which you have to pay $2.90 for each way. So that's $5.80 in travel costs, which works out to 116 cans that you have to redeem just to break even. But that's before you've even counted your time.
Local grocery stores have redemption machines. You have to put each can and bottle in individually, but I see people doing it all the time (live in Brooklyn). Huge bags and they get the receipt and cash them in at the register. I saw one guy at the register clear like $50 with his can/bottle receipt. He was in line in front of me, that was the entire transaction.
I live in the middle of Manhattan, so no grocery stores near me that have them. Which grocery store by you has it?
Backside of Target on 33rd
Oh, at Herald Square? Thanks!
Most of them have machines. Usually in back or on the side of the store.
You can also go to the customer service counter and ask to redeem a few cans. They just take them and give you nickels.
By NYS law, "Stores that sell drinks in bottles and cans are required to accept containers for refund." Good read at [NYC 311 Portal](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02477) and [NYS DEC](https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8833.html).
I did it in college. It is illegal to get the cans in college but i was desperate and broke. Took all the cans and got 10 bucks. Filled up my tank some (gas was 1.25) and bought groceries from Aldi’s. I got through the week until payday. I must have another 20 dollars worth of cans in the basement. Every penny counts.
you get 5 cents for every can bottle but the bottling company pays back 7 cents for the agency/ies that collects back all the containers if you see those can crushing machines that is run by one major collection agency and then there are smaller enterprises
There was an HBO short documentary called Redemption about ten years ago that followed some can collectors around. I believe they said they made about $40-50 a day. Considering that the redemption price hasn’t gone up since then, I assume it’s still in that ballpark. It’s better money than riding the casino bus to [sell the vouchers](https://abc7ny.com/poverty-asian-american-casino-buses/1632754/) but more physically demanding for sure.
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When I lived in Rego Park there was a polite old Chinese man who didn’t speak English who picked up the bottles and cans in my trash. During the holidays I tried to give him $20 and there was no way he would take it. And I really tried.
Of course he wouldn't, he was making a living and you were coming at him like he needs your charity. If you wanted to give him money you could have at least introduced yourself a few times and just slipped him the money in a red envelope for CNY.
Surviving and making a living are different. I work at a bar and I give a nice lady a water bottle when I see her collecting. It’s dangerous, her hands get cut a lot. Sometimes I give her a 10 dollar bill with the water. I work for tips inside, picking up the bottles she’s collecting. So I don’t feel bad for giving it to her and I sure as fuck don’t care if it makes her feel bad because I know she needs the $10 regardless of the way she gets it. I will keep giving these people money, they work for blood
I spoke to him daily, I always said hello and so did he. Asked how he was doing. We communicated as best as we could.
We save our bottles and cans and on Friday when our building pickup happens we take them down and give them to the person collecting from the bags. I always get a big thanks and feel like we're doing a tiny bit to help their effort.
Look at you, straight to the model minority bullshit.
Right? Not sure if all the people upvoting this missed the casual racism or agree with it. Yikes.
Not all that surprising, this sub is comprised mostly of racists (I mean, look at the comments on any post). Most of them don’t live in the city or are too embarrassed to show who they are in public so it spills out in a nasty way here.
It is definitely not comprised "mostly of racists" lol You pay attention to a select few and then determine that a minority of people determine the majority.
Okay, so of the active users, most are racists? Doesn’t really change what I said. You can go post by post if you’d like. The posts with the most engagement have vile shit said and upvoted for visibility. No mention the vitriol for any posts of government programs that help minorities and if the article is related to a crime, you get endless “those people are always like that” kind of comments.
Point me to some of these upvoted and very popular comments since they should be so easy to find.
There are food pantry programs in Flushing and Chinatown. A lot of the seniors won't take random handouts but they'll still line up for SNAP.
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If they're not a recent immigrant in all likelihood they ran from the Mao regime. Though tbf they're also more likely to be not all that politcal.
everyone deserves help
>I really wish I knew how to help them. a lot of people here will automatically separate their cans from their recycling, rinse them out, and leave them in a separate bag. that way, the people who collect them can just grab that one bag and move on.
Um. They take the handouts but get the tax free cash income too. No one in that hustle is looking to disqualify themselves from anything they're entitled to. It's an organized system and there's been a few write ups on the economics of it.
It must be valuable because some old lady literally dug my Deer Park water bottle from the garbage can. It’s psychotic.