California Redemption Plastic & Aluminum

[Pronto Hauling]

Work has been slow and scrap prices are down in my area. Today while sitting on my couch with no work I decided to take the dog for a walk. We strolled over to the local high school and I took a peek into an on campus garbage container. The thing was chalked full of aluminum cans and plastic bev containers. I scrounged up a few empty plastic bags and went to work. A couple hours later after scouring the whole campus I ended up with two huge bags of plastic and one huge bag of aluminum. Tomorrow I plan on hitting the other high school in town...hehe. Besides from my own consumption I've never really done the bev container recycling gig. Here in California I have two options for selling bev containers. Option one is take them to the scrap yard and sell by weight. 1.80-2.00 a pound for cans and I believe around 90 cents per pound on plastic bottles. The other option is the reverse vending machines. You put empty bev containers in, and you get a ticket for payment at a near by store. I know for cans they pay 5 cents a piece for under 12 oz and 10 cents for 24 oz and up. I believe its the same for plastic but not positive. Im terrible with math so my question is would I get a better pay check selling by weight or selling each individual container separately? I searched the forums for an answer before posting this and found none....Thanks. :confused:

[PartTimeScrapper]

I thnk its like 26 cans per pound of alluminum? So that would be $1.30 per pound?

[Otto]

It take approximately 30 12oz cans to make up a pound, so it looks like you would be ahead selling by weight.

[heeroyue2002]

amazing! most of the schools have ousted sugar drinks etc. our local one had milk in the vending machines!

[Pronto Hauling]

amazing! most of the schools have ousted sugar drinks etc. our local one had milk in the vending machines!

I know..i was amazed... at least half of the cans I found were rockstar, monster, or some other energy drink...Crazy, im sure thats all they need is a bunch of wired teenagers running around.

[heeroyue2002]

maybe its from off campus stuff? over here they can leave the campus for lunch. they banned energy drinks because the kids were sneaking in the ones that contained alcohol and drinking them publiclly etc and no one knew they were alcoholic.

[GeorgeB]

If my yard took plastic, then I would definitely start doing that myself, but unfortunately just metals.