Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

Well i live in illinios and the price here is around 60 to 65 cents a pound.

The Expert answers:

Before recycling your old mobile phone, you can compare the prices at the mobile phone recycling comparison website. Different recycling companies and the prices they offer are available at http://www.sellmobilephone.com

The Expert answers:

You can try bringing it back to your provider. I’m not sure if you get money, though.

The Expert answers:

Scrap Metal recycling prices for various metals and materials can be obtained at http://scrapmetalpricesandauctions.com/

The Expert answers:

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for an individual to make any money from recycling cans, and that’s because the price of scrap aluminum is too low to make it worthwhile, unless you have thousands of cans. I don’t know the exact price, but recently, it was about 42 cents per pound. (It varies every day, and I have also seen it around 30 cents a pound.) There are roughly 30-32 cans per pound, so a can might be worth 1.5 cents or so. But that’s a delivered price. You have to bring the cans to the place they will be melted down. If you can’t (and of course, you can’t) you take them to a wholesaler, who will pay you even less money. So unless you have thousands of cans, that price is not high enough to make any money. Even worse, you might have to crush the cans first, so that the buyer knows there aren’t any full cans in the pile to increase the weight.

For example, if you have 300 cans, that is about 10 pounds’ worth. Let’s be optimistic and say you could get 50 cents per pound, which is above the last price I saw and way above what a wholesaler would pay. But assuming that you deliver them to a recycler, the 300 cans might be worth $5.00. However, if you have to drive 10 miles to the recycler and 10 miles back, you would use about a gallon of gas, which means you would be spending at least half the $5.00 on gas. On top of that, you would need to put the cans in large plastic bags for transport, so your profit would be even lower. And that’s even with the optimistic assumptions I made.

It makes sense for communities to do recycling, because they are able to collect thousands of cans every day, and tens of thousands every week. But the economics of it just don’t work for individual people. I know this is not the answer you wanted, but I hope it helps anyway.

The Expert answers:

A waste of time and money. With few exceptions recycling is promoted by government agencies and/or environmental groups. They are not interested in the cost or labor involved in recycling. They have a political agenda and recycling is part of it.

Take plastic bottles as an example. In my town recycling of plastic bottles is mandatory. We must sort our trash and put plastic bottles in a separate bin. The city loves this program. First they force you to buy a $5 plastic bin from the city for $50. Instant profit for the city. The bins are not numbered so if they get lost or stolen there is no way to track them. If you lose your bin you must pay another $50. Meanwhile the city has a return center for “lost” bins and you get $5 for every bin you turn in. No questions asked, no ID needed. This means you have to take out your bin once a week and stand and guard it until the truck arrives then take it back inside.

If the city finds a plastic bottle in your regular trash it is a $100 fine. More money for the city.

The unions love this recycling project. It means more union jobs as “recycling engineers” as they call the drivers of the special trucks, and “inspectors” who go around and root through your garbage looking for reasons to fine you $100. They also have separate mechanics to work on the recycling trucks. They are just Ford pick ups but they need special mechanics to work on them. At union wages.

The local government and eco groups use this recycling as PR for their “Green Initiative” program. They tell us about all the jobs it creates, the income it brings to our city, and how they are cleaning up the planet.

Meanwhile do you know what they do with the plastic bottles? There is no place to sell them locally and it cost more than the plastic is worth to ship them to the nearest place that reuses them. So the city dumps them in the local landfill. This is what recycling means to me.

Paper recycling. Paper plants get tax subsidies to recycle paper. That is our tax money. Then they sell you the recycled paper at a higher cost than new paper. That’s right. They sell you inferior paper at a higher price because it is “green.”

Recycling metals works because it is private business and not run by the government. Steel, aluminum, copper, lead, etc. Scrap yards buy these metals from you. You make money from recycling and the metal plants save money from buying recyclable metals. It works because it is profitable for both parties and cost no tax dollars.

If private business ever gets into the recycling of plastic, paper, glass, etc without government interference then it will work. Until then it’s a waste of time amd money.

The Expert answers:

Depends. Are you selling these cans directly to a scrap yard? If so, the money you get will be dependent on the price of aluminum. Alternatively, are you taking these cans to a recycle depot? If so, how much do they pay you for each can? Divide 50.00 by how much they pay you per can to get the number of cans you need. Here they pay 5 cents so it would be 50/0.05 = 1000 cans.

The Expert answers:

US$ 2035.00 highest price
US$ 1693.00 Average Price
US$ 1891.21 lowes price

Daily Aluminum – LME Cash Prices
Date DScrap Sellrice Close Price Change Up / Down Changes in (%)
07-21-2009 Tuesday 1671.5 1713.5 +42 +2.45%
07-22-2009 Wednesday 1713.5 1693 -20.5 -1.21%
07-24-2009 Friday 1707 1702.5 -4.5 -0.26%
07-27-2009 Monday 1702.5 1798 +95.5 +5.31%
07-30-2009 Thursday 1814 1775.5 -38.5 -2.17%
08-03-2009 Monday 1819 1863.5 +44.5 +2.39%
08-04-2009 Tuesday 1863.5 1930.5 +67 +3.47%
08-05-2009 Wednesday 1930.5 1904.5 -26 -1.37%
08-07-2009 Friday 1904.5 2001.5 +97 +4.85%
08-10-2009 Monday 2001.5 1972 -29.5 -1.50%
08-11-2009 Tuesday 1972 1998 +26 +1.30%
08-12-2009 Wednesday 1998 1954 -44 -2.25%

The Expert answers:

Most places do have a recycling center you can go to. Check out http://earth911.org to find one near you.

Depending on the laws and norms where you live some pay per pound and others pay a redemption value. The redemption value is a deposit you paid when you purchased the product and is usually determined by the state, generally 5 cents per can or bottle but this varies. Some states exclude water from the deposit system. They know which cans even if they’re smashed because it’s a standard system. The only way you can cheat the system is if you bought the product in another state that doesn’t use the system or has a different rate, which is mostly unlikely to happen on a large enough scale to matter much.

Those that pay per pound are based entirely on market value – what they pay is directly tied to what they can sell the melt down for, so yes the economy will dictate that.

Generally, since you paid for the product, you will never MAKE money recycling unless you didn’t pay for the product to begin with AND do it in a high volume. You will only reduce your cost for buying products.

Because most places have a convenient curbside pick up now (whether you know it or not,some jurisdictions sort from your regular trash) recycling will increase, but getting money back will decrease. Why drive to a recycling center when your trash man will do it for you?

For the city to have implemented a recycling program chances are good they are at least making the money back that it costs them to run the program, if not more. The economy might drive places like schools and museums to install recycling bins that they redeem to recover some money. As well I know a few people that are more concerend with every penny so they’ve begun recycling where they would have seen it as a waste of time before. So yes, the economy will boost recycling. However, less people will be able to afford soda and bottled water and such, so this may be a toss up in the end.

Most recycling centers are middle men with a close affiliation to the actual melt down plant. Sometimes they’re owned by the same company but it’s rarely done at the same site.