Recycling

viv.

Hi
I hope I am posting this in the right place as I am new to posting so sorry in advance if it is wrong.

I am trying to make money from my waste. DOes anyone know if I am able to ell my glass bottles, cardboard or plastic. Do companies buy this type of stuff? I am not after lots of money just would rather sell the stuff than put it out for the council who often refuse to take more than 1 bag full!!!!

Thanks

moonrakerz

Cullet (re-cycled glass) had a value of around £45 per tonne - it cost between £20 and £100 a tonne to collect it. The value fell to zero.
However a recent "surge" in demand has pushed the price to £5 a tonne !

Recycled paper is worth even less !

patman99

The best stuff to make money from are Aluminium (Tin foil, takeaway tins & drinks cans).
Steel cans are worth saving as you get a lot of wieght for little bulk, but the price is much lower.
It is worth investing in a can-crusher to squash those tins down really small.

As fo glass & paper. It really isn't worth it.

foxgloves

There used to be an organisation called 'Alcan' which collected aluminium i.e drinks cans and paid people by weight. I used to save cans for a friend who was raising money for some or other community project and I know she used to turn up in a supermarket carpark when 'Alcan' were there, and they'd weigh the cans & pay her. It was a long time ago but I think I remember her saying it worked out at around a penny a can. Can also remember around the same time reading about someone who used to go around parks, festival sites, etc, with a magnet to check the cans he was picking up were aluminium and he was also cashing them in. I think he was unemployed & spending a lot of time doing this. I don't know if Alcan still collect & pay for people's cans in the same way. I suppose most people would probably just put them in their council recycling bin now, so the demand for their services may have dwindled.

Ben84

I don't know of any companies collecting domestic waste and paying for it. They generally buy in large bulk, certainly more than is practical for storage at home.

However, if you want to turn your waste in to money there are a few ways. Many people who make and sell jams/preserves give a discount when you give them jars.

You can also turn your waste in to other things that are useful. I use newspaper instead of kitchen paper to save money, and some people turn old card/paper in to manufactured logs to save firewood.

However, the best way to save money on packaging is to buy less of it. Why buy things you don't need and bin them, or sell them at a much lower value. There are lots of ways to reduce packaging, more than might be obvious at first.

Refills are great. Loose fruit and vegtables are pretty obvious. Swapping liquid soap with bars (lush sell shampoo bars), exchanging canned beans with dried ones saves lots as a little bag goes a long way, and generally looking for less packaging or longer lasting options.

It started out as an ecological thing, but my shopping costs have gone down a lot, so it's a good money saving thing too.

Mids_Costcutter

For prices for most materials including metals, plastics and glass see:

http://www.letsrecycle.com/prices/

This is a website for businesses, local authorities and community groups involved in recycling and waste management. Aluminium used beverage containers (UBCs) are fetching up to £700/tonne and have been rising this month.

SailorSam

Was anyone watching Tv earlier on, i think it was Channel 4 or 5, the bloke who does one of those housing programmes Kevin McCloud ???? He was in India in the slums, the people there recycle about 80% of everything, He was at the local dump where crowds of women and children working in filth were waiting for the bin lorries to empty. One woman had collected a bag about the size of half a dozen binbags, it was full of scraps of paper and was worth 2p, another had a similar size bag of plastic which was worth 3p.
Slumming It: Thur 9pm & Fri 8pm on C4 | 4Homes | Channel4.com

foxgloves

Yes, recorded the first part of the Kevin McCloud programme and have just watched it this morning. Absolutely fascinating. Looking forward to the next part. You can tell that Kevin, while partly repelled by things like the rats & basic sanitation is starting to see that the people living there have the sense of community that we no longer have. As for the people scraping through tons of Mumbai's rubbish looking for things they can sell for scrap, whatever would they make of the level of stuff that's just chucked away over here. I felt more ashamed than usual about being part of such a wasteful society, despite good efforts being made by our household to reduce our own waste. Well worth watching.

radiohelen

Our council has decided to stop collecting all the plastics it used to and now only takes bottles - presumably because the hard of thinking couldn't look at the triangles and separate accordingly. The rest goes into a big recycling thingy that turns it into flock which allegedly gets recycled, used to create energy...

The Ball Mill is the only one in of its kind in the UK and can divert up to 70% of household waste from landfill. The process extracts all metal, cardboard, plastic and organic material and sends these for recycling, composting or energy recovery.

Thanks to all of your help and support, last year we recycled and composted 33% of our waste in Leicester. Together we can do even more.

Personally I'm not sure that this will be effective - 33 per cent is not much especially for a city that claims to be Britain's first enviroment city.
I fear there is no way you can make money from waste in this country unless you are doing it on an industrial scale, if you manage it, let us know so we can all join in the fun.

Jon_Tiffany

As radiohelen said - to make any money on this it needs to be on a large scale to get the efficiencies. Seems strange that the council are refusing to accept recycling waste.

mrsvodka

Right, I'm going to invest in a Can Crusher this weekend. Looking on ebay right now, but if anyone on here wants to sell one (or recommend a certain type or place to buy one) that would be brilliant!!
Thanks.