Every two months, I fill my car with the aluminum cans I accumulate (which amounts to 80-100 lbs), drive to the recycling company, and accept the paltry amount they pay. The only real reason I do this is because I realized I could multitask when I exercised and pick up cans I passed when I was out on the streets anyway. That way, I get paid 10-20 cents every day that I work out because I find things that other people leave behind. However, it's a matter of scale like so many other things, and so it takes me two months to obtain enough to even bother recycling, and at that rate it's just not worth it. My neighbors rarely do any work to even separate recyclables from their regular trash. They have more important, more productive, and rewarding things to do with their time.
Contrary to popular belief, recycling isn't a new thing. During world war II, the United States encouraged a series of rubber drives, metal drives, scrap drives, etc., all with the intent of utilizing discarded materials to accelerate and enhance the war effort. Since the people didn't suffer from as many distractions as we do, since work was scarce, and since time was plenty, it gave people something to do, even if that's all they could do, to participate in something bigger. Now that we can earn money, and now that entertainment abounds, none of us seem too concerned with being part of something bigger. Add to that, Recycling prices haven't kept up with inflation. I remember at the age of 10 that aluminum prices were $0.25/lb, and we would gleefully collect aluminum and take it down to earn a few extra dollars. At the age of ten, five dollars went a long way. Trouble is, I'm getting about the same amount of money now for cans, but it just doesn't seem as exciting or go as far. Today they pay me a paltry $0.30/lb; last time they were $0.35/lb, but even at that price, I get about $30 for an ENTIRELY FULL CAR. If I had to go out of my way to do this, I would probably break even on gas, but I don't even come close to breaking even on time spent.
Recycling takes a lot of work for the return. If you just collect your own cans, you get about a penny per can on average based on the mass of each can compared to the spot price. This means you can recoup about 4% of the cost of a 12 pack of soda assuming you take the time. The time invested can be enormous. You must pick up the cans, crush them, store them, load them in your car, drive them over, unload, and then wait in line for the tare and for the payment. When I consider all the time involved, if I were doing it specifically in order to get money, I wouldn't waste my time. Since I collect them while I'm out walking or jogging, it's not any extra time spent, but the crushing and packing take time, and I think I could do better working part time at the 7/11 on the corner if money were my only impetus. Furthermore, most things that are dropped aren't recycled. My idiot neighbor put styrofoam in his plastic recycling. I know that polystyrene is technically a plastic, but nobody recycles it. It's too difficult. Even the cans I collect are a mess. When they aren't dirty, often they contain stale contents or bugs, and so they stink up everything they touch including the seats in my Saturn which are now stained from leaking soda. I can earn an extra $200 per year much faster doing other things, almost anything really.
Without a war to necessitate recycling, I see very little encouragement anywhere to do it besides the guilt trips given us by environmental movements. Recycling companies don't seem interested in encouraging it. Outside the window, they post depressing articles about how scrap is bringing ever lower prices, how companies aren't buying, how many things are not recyclable, ad infiniutum. They seem to hire the worst people possible to manage it. The employees are plodding, pandering, pedantic and portly. Most of them are surly. Some of them are dismissive and even derisive. The companies make it complicated to process your recyclables. I'm sure it's about accountability, but sometimes I feel like a convicted felon between the ID check, photo, scales, only one guy taking measurements, and the broken ATM that pays you. I mean, how do illegal aliens recycle if they need a photo ID? How do homeless people get paid for their cans? Do you know a full shopping cart gets them less than $10 cash? By the time I do all this, I might as well let someone else because my time can be worth far more than $0.30/lb. When I lived in Reno, they gave you a trash rebate if you recycled. I get my own "rebate" now, but all it really does it pay for my running shoes and hiking boots every year, which is a nice way to break even I guess since you can't get that running in a gym. If they continue to cut prices, I'll probably just leave the cans where they fall and not waste my time.
Unless people get a personal warm fuzzy from doing what they ought, they need some other kind of incentive to participate in good causes. That's why they pay to recycle. It beats having to mine it, but if you recycle too much, the miners lose their jobs. So, it's a catch-22. They give you a small token, but it's really not enough to be worth your while unless you're unemployed or ten years old. I give my mom credit for going to the effort to let us do this, because I know it cost her time and money for gas to get us to the recycling place. I think she was trying to teach us that we ought to do it, and it helped that we also got paid. However, it's not really an efficient use of time when I could do anything else unless I'm doing it in concert with some other activity. IN any case, you could never sustain yourself recycling aluminum cans, even if it were $0.50/lb. I would have earned a whole $25/month doing that, or I could work at the store for three hours instead. Maybe the garbage company, on an economy of scale, finds it worth their time and effort. I know I wouldn't commend it to anyone even if it is good for the planet. It's not good for most people, particularly if the person doing it would be more valuable elsewhere.
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