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81 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2006 : 16:25:23
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anyone here collect aluminum?
we do. seems people have this terrible habit of throwing beer cans, coke cans, energy drink cans...and throwing them out the window of their cars, and leaving them in parking lots, and throwing them into the trash.
one place here that buys aluminum pays 80 bucks for 100 pounds of cans. 75 cents a pound below 100 pounds.
and its not hard to find cans. they are literally everywhere. i have found up to a pound of cans in a parking lot, heck i found 20 plus pounds in a bag someone ditched and they were nice enough to have them smashed for me.
aluminum can found just about everywhere and often. people really do not consider how much they're throwing away in money, literally.
i believe it takes about 32 cans to make a pound. (i did the math correctly and i might not have as im not sure how much a current can weighs) 32 cans! thats a bit more than it used to take to make a pound but...billions of dollars in aluminum cans is being thrown away annually. holy crap! not only do you make a couple cents each time you pick up a can you are also saving energy. the energy it takes to make one new can from ore to the finished product could recycle 8 used cans. and considering there are billions of dollars worth of cans in the trash thats a lot of energy being wasted on top of the money lost.
americans are very wasteful.
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Ardent Listener
Administrator
USA
4841 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2006 : 19:55:30
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In additon old aluminum storm doors amd what not. I think some old BBQs might be cast aluminum. Old aluminum cooking pots and pans. You see them out for the trash all the time. I recall seeing a flatbed truck hauling huge aluminum bars a few years back. I kept hoping one would fall off.
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If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. -Napoleon Hill |
Edited by - Ardent Listener on 08/25/2006 20:41:35 |
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81 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2006 : 23:19:38
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a truck dumped (lost) its load of sheet aluminum here the other day. too bad they cleaned it all up.
its just amazing to see aluminum EVERYWHERE. you dont even have to look hard to find it. its on the side of just about every road in america.
i think my current grill might be aluminum. more scrap if i can get a new one sometime in the future.
we had some work done on our house recently and the guy in charge formed the flashing with the wrong color point out so that was one more piece of aluminum for out pile. that and we got the scrap pieces from the aluminum parts he did for the roof of our new deck and piece of the old gutter he had to remove. so we got quite a bit from the work they did. i think we have easily over 50 pounds in cans and lord knows how much in scrap. and i picked up a little copper from some wiring he was doing for us. not much but its better than none.
only thing is it sucks going through a dumpster searching for cans, its dirty work but one couple put their kids through college going through dumpsters for cans and other recyclables so obviously there's money to be had in it. |
Edited by - n/a on 08/25/2006 23:23:10 |
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478 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2006 : 04:56:14
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I just had close to 1000 lbs of aluminum GIVEN TO ME FREE! The place my O L works at was replacing commercial carpets. They have a rigid aluminum mesh on the back that rolls up with the carpet. 90 % of the weight of this stuff was high grade aluminum! The manager said that me taking it saved them from renting a dumpster. I made three trips to the business to pick it up and after 8 hours of hard work, I managed to strip off the old rubber and carpet. I have about $30 in fuel invested and sore hands but I got almost $600 for it!
Now I have a pile of rubber and carpet strips to box up and put out for the trash. |
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81 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2006 : 15:27:20
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i think you can recycle the rubber though you may not get a dime for it. and i have no idea where you could take it.
i just hate to see renewable resources being thrown away. |
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38 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2006 : 16:28:28
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| This is not metal, but what about newspaper? What's the price you can fetch for taking newspaper to be recycled? Seems like it would be easy to start a side business picking up all this junk(metal/newspaper/cans/etc.) if you lived in a major metropolitan area. |
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478 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2006 : 17:41:16
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quote:
Originally posted by yeldarb
This is not metal, but what about newspaper? What's the price you can fetch for taking newspaper to be recycled? Seems like it would be easy to start a side business picking up all this junk(metal/newspaper/cans/etc.) if you lived in a major metropolitan area.
Fuel costs will eat up any potential to make money on paper recycling. Iran and a new hurricane make this even more unprofitable . Put your money in Exxon/Mobil |
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81 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2006 : 17:46:44
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| newspaper will literally gets you cents on the ton. it is not worth it. |
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ImperialFleet
Penny Pincher Member
USA
217 Posts |
Posted - 09/01/2006 : 18:39:45
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I read that newspaper is worth about $140/ton in the U.S.
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“Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters" -Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke |
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38 Posts |
Posted - 09/07/2006 : 20:44:26
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| I wonder if a good side business could be made of picking up aluminum cans. You could arrange to put your recycling bins in places where there would be lots of pop consumption. Maybe even get paid(just a nominal fee) to do so on contract. |
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cakesea
Penny Sorter Member
51 Posts |
Posted - 09/17/2006 : 15:24:35
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| i found a good place to find aluminum cans is in back of my school. we have trash cans for different recyclables and no one is ever back their. i asked and the principal says that the school never gets any money fr them so i asked if i could have them and he agreed so i get about 3 pounds a week i know thats not much but it really adds up |
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56 Posts |
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78 Posts |
Posted - 10/01/2006 : 22:37:15
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| For that pound (32 cans) you get $1.60 getting the deposit (5 cents/can), and you can also do glass and plastic bottles while you're at it. This seems like a better way to get money out of them. |
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cakesea
Penny Sorter Member
51 Posts |
Posted - 10/01/2006 : 22:56:56
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| but that only happens if you are willing to drive to another state if you are not in one of those states to redeem them for the deposit. most people arent willing to do that. |
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78 Posts |
Posted - 10/02/2006 : 13:48:32
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| I didn't realize it's not like that in every state, I haven't been in a place where they don't do the deposit thing. |
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5 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 05:48:13
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Your average Al can weighs 15 g. So 32 cans for one pound is a good estimate. While collecting cans today, I found an Al/Cu rad. I know they are $1.2 lbs. How much do they weigh on average? Also found a derelict house, and under it, there are about ten of metres of copper tubing! I need to cut them (nasty piece of work, but I'm incredibly resilient  ). There were lots of PVC wires also, huge wires with fine coppers within. Just can't figure out how to extract the copper. I have a sort of furnace at my disposal though. May as well throw into the fire and retrieve the copper. Hope it doesn't melt. |
Edited by - n/a on 10/05/2006 05:50:54 |
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5 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 05:54:39
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quote:
Originally posted by FlyingMoose
For that pound (32 cans) you get $1.60 getting the deposit (5 cents/can), and you can also do glass and plastic bottles while you're at it. This seems like a better way to get money out of them.
$1.60 a pound, No way. I've checked the recycler's world and they are 33 cents a pound as scrap. Unless the deposit is near you, selling em there is not worth the transportation. Better the local scrap dealer. |
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Metalophile
Penny Collector Member
USA
320 Posts |
Posted - 10/05/2006 : 07:58:27
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quote:
Originally posted by AluminiumMan
. . . Also found a derelict house, and under it, there are about ten of metres of copper tubing! I need to cut them (nasty piece of work, but I'm incredibly resilient ). There were lots of PVC wires also, huge wires with fine coppers within. Just can't figure out how to extract the copper. I have a sort of furnace at my disposal though. May as well throw into the fire and retrieve the copper. Hope it doesn't melt.
I wouldn't go stripping a derelict house. Even derelict houses have legal owners, and that would be considered theft. Also, PVC is polyvinylchloride. If you burn it, you will produce dangerous hydrochloric acid fumes, and probably other nasty chlorinated compounds as well.
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aluminum anyone???
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