Thought I would take the emptys back to Costco and get some full ones. Get to Costco and they have two machines to collect empties: one for bunches of cans and one for everything else, one at a time. The can machine is wide open, but there is a line for the bottle machine: two women with grocery carts full of empties. I give it about five seconds consideration and walk off, abandoning my half a cart of empties. What? I'm gonna wait some number of minutes to collect my $2.70. I don't think so.
On rare occasions I have been out and about early on recycling day and I notice that some of my neighbors just put their bottles out with the recycling. Don't they realize they are throwning away good money? Every one of those stupid bottles is worth a nickel. Seems like there is an opportunity here for someone to make a little money. You would only have to collect 2,000 bottles to make $100. Say you average one bottle a house (say one house in six sets their cash money bottles out with the recycling, and they only set out one six pack every two weeks), you would only have to cruise by 2,000 houses. Figure an average lot is 100 feet wide (that's a bit much, but there are going to be sections where there are no houses), that's 50 houses a mile, so you will only have to cover 40 miles. Figure 50 cents a mile for operating a motor vehicle, that comes to $20. How long it takes to process each house will determine how long it takes you to cover those 40 miles. And then you get to haul your empties to some store that will accept them in bulk. You don't want to have to wait on one of those machines. It would take you a month of Sundays to unload 2,000 bottles.
I think you get the point. You might be able to make a couple of bucks doing this, but it would be a heck of lot of work. Pan handling would probably be more lucrative. Bottle bills are just nuts.
The Phantom Tollbooth is a book I read when I was a kid. There was one scene early on where our hero was the set the task of moving a pile of sand using a pair of tweezers. He worked at it for a little bit, but quickly realized it was a complete waste of his time, and went on to . . . whatever else happened in the rest of the book.
One of the arguments for sending jobs overseas is that it frees up people in the US to do other, more productive things. Returning bottles to the local grocery store is not a more productive use of your time. Okay, it is not a productive use of most people's time. I suppose that is all that some people can aspire to.
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I went to the rock festival at Wacken this year. There I met an old hippie guy with a VW-Bus who attends rockfests where he collects empty cans and bottles filling his van THRICE daily. He told me he makes €8000/month in summer at these rockfests and averages €2000/month in winter (which he spends on Mallorca :-)
Not my lifestyle, but he's making a success of it :-)
Aha! He found the mother lode! And here I've been panning for a few grains down here is the flatlands. I knew I should have gone up in them hills.
How much is a bottle deposit in Germany?
And what kind of rigamarole do you have to go through to get your money back?
And lastly, do you return your empties, or just dump them in the recycling / trash?
Deposit = 15c to 25c dependent on size.
Return to ANY store selling bottles, even if of a different make.
Only wine bottles go in the trash.
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