Cans (soup, pet food, etc) & general intro from new member

Originally Posted by AGangi

We go through lots of cans. We have a large 55-lb wheelie for garbage and a same sized one for recycling and every week the recycling one is filled to the top almost entirely in non-aluminum cans (canned veg, soup, petfood cans, etc). Are they all the same type of metal, or do I need to be able to tell the difference somehow and sort them? We do not drink soda- so none of those kind of cans. Given the amount we go through, I was wondering if it was worth trying to get money for them instead of paying the trash company take it. If it matters, I am in Wheaton Illinois USA / DuPage County.

Googling this question is what directed me to your forum- I am a complete newb at scrapping and have no idea how its done (do I need to wash them out? remove labels? How do I find a place to sell it to? How do I know I got a good price? etc.)

I suppose I'm a bit of a "cousin" to scrappers in that I am a dumpster diver- I get lots of free perfectly good food for our farm animals this way; I also have a knack for finding curbside finds or freecycle give aways that are worth reselling (garage sale, etsy, etc) or re-purposing into art.

Speaking of which, I have a bunch of photos of sculptures I make from found metal parts (like old keys, antique sewing machine parts etc)- turned into things like seahorses, butterflies, dragons, etc. But being new the forum wont let me post photos... how long until I can share those?

Thanks!

Welcome from NY!

First off, there are two main categories of metal (as far as scrap is concerned), ferrous and non-ferrous. In layman’s terms, that means containing iron or not, respectively. The way to tell the difference is if it’s magnetic or not. Non-ferrous metals (aluminum, copper, lead, etc.) are worth more.

As for your food cans, those are likely steel coated in tin. Steel is a ferrous metal so they would go into the “big” pile at the yard which is where the shred/tin/light iron (the terminology depends on the yard or who you talk to but it means the same thing).

As far as cleaning them out, that really depends on the yard you want to bring it to. You can always google scrap yards or metal recycling and you’ll find what’s local to you. Call them up and ask your questions! They’ll (probably) be happy to answer your questions because, after all, they’re trying to earn your business.

As to how to know if you got a good price, calling the different yards will help you figure that out. Call them up, tell them you have food cans and they’ll tell you what category they’d fall into and what the current price is (usually by gross ton for ferrous metals). Around where I am, shred/tin/light iron fetches about $200-$240 a GT but I’ve heard of places in the Midwest that pay as low as $90 a GT. It varies wildly based on a great number of factors.

So, yes, I would avoid paying to dump all of those cans. If you feel that it’s not worth your time to gather them all up, clean them up, etc then you can make a post on Craigslist that you’ll be generating this scrap on a regular basis and you will have scrappers beating down your door begging to take them away for you. But if you decide to go for it yourself, you will get bitten by the scrapping bug and won’t look back



Last piece of advice…read these forums! There is a wealth of information here and your googling brought you to the right place. Good luck and happy recycling!