2 million cans

tiff

I've been looking into can recycling, did a search on MSE and found this thread. Just wondered how you're getting on with this challenge? There are no Tesco can recycling bins in Bristol/Avon at all so my only option is scrap metal dealers, there's one 5 mins from me. I know on an american forum I go on, one particular person challenged herself to raise $1000 dollars in a month. Her husband got an extra casual job delivering phone books and she and the kids collected cans which added to the total. Very inspiring and something to think about.

mostlycheerful

Go for it, you could be the new Tin-Can-Curt Degerman or Stan-the-Can-Man Gordon Elwood :

Family feud over fortune of Swedish tramp who made millions from tin cans
To the people of Skellefteå he was "Tin-Can-Curt", the tramp who scavenged drink containers for recycling. He used the money he earned from collecting scrap metal from rubbish bins to trade on the international markets. For forty years he spent his days touring the bins on an old bicycle stuffing the containers he collected into bags tied between the handlebars…through shrewd investment he had turned the modest deposits earned from returning the empty cans into a fortune estimated at more than £1.1 million. Relatives discovered he had left behind a portfolio of stocks and shares worth at least £731,000 in a Swiss bank account and a safety deposit box containing 124 gold bars valued at £250,000.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/7538261/Family-feud-over-fortune-of-Swedish-tramp-who-made-millions-from-tin-cans.html

Family Agrees to Share Bum's Hidden Millions
He looked like a bum, lived like a bum and even smelled like a bum. So Curt Degerman's family figured he was penniless. But they were wrong -- to the tune of more than $1.5 million. That's the amount of money the Swede amassed by spending a lifetime rifling though garbage cans for scrap metal and investing the proceeds of his junk in the international stock markets…Sometimes, it seems, it literally pays to be a bum
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/family-agrees-to-share-bums-hidden-millions/19421570

Relatives settle over eccentric Swede's tin can riches
http://www.thelocal.se/25804/20100329/

Secret millionaire: Tin-Can-Curt, the tramp who made £1m from recycling cans
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262496/Secret-millionaire-Relatives-tramp-1m-recycling-old-tin-cans-settle-inheritance-feud.html#ixzz10fsKwobM

The real secret millionaires
Gordon Elwood
Like an American version of Last of the Summer Wine, Gordon Elwood held his second-hand trousers up with a bungee cord and ate food from the Salvation Army.
He refused to pay out to have a landline installed in his home and would apparently ride on his bicycle collecting cans and bottles to recycle for a few cents apiece.
When Elwood died in 1999, aged 79, he left behind $10 million (£6.5 million). The money was raised through shrewd investments and extreme frugality and has become a trust fund - the Gordon Elwood Foundation - providing financial help to worthy individuals, families and communities in his hometown of Medford, Oregon.
http://money.uk.msn.com/your-cash/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=153055062

Stan-the-Can-Man Gordon Elwood
In the valley where I live there was a man named Gordon Elwood, but all the kids nicknamed him Stan-the-Can-Man. The elderly Elwood rode his broken down old bicycle up and down the streets, digging cans out of dumpsters to recycle for cash. Most people were repulsed by his appearance and assumed he was homeless. He was shabbily dressed and wore second-hand tattered clothes. He used a bungee cord as a belt to hold up his pants. Elwood's bedraggled appearance was a pathetic thing to behold, but mostly Elwood was ignored.

He drank out dated milk, eating old bread, and he accepted food hand outs from the Salvation Army. He showed up on holidays at charitable organizations to eat free meals. He would fill his pockets with cookies and drink refreshments at the local bank.

Elwood wasn't homeless though, he had worked as a T.V repair man for 46 years of his life and eventually retired in 1985. His house had no heat so he slept in a sleeping bag. The house looked like a shack and the paint was cracking off of it, and there were leaks in his roof. The house was encompassed by old broken down television sets and parts, looking like a junk yard.

He adopted cats from animal shelters. He had so many cats that his neighbors complained. There were discarded tuna cans all over the yard that his cats ate from.

But Elwood was no pauper. He died in October of 1999, and the entire valley was surprised to learn that 'Stan-the-Can-Man' was actually a multi-millionaire worth over 10 million dollars. He was a miser that was a financial genius who masqueraded as pauper, making his fortune in the stock market. He left 9 million dollars to several charities such as the Red Cross and a cat rescue charity.
http://www.markets.fallondpicks.com/2007/10/stockchartscom-weekly-review_27.html

mostlycheerful

Some more info about where to recycle aluminium cans :

There are around 300 Cash for Cans centres across the UK, where you can sell your aluminium cans for cash, to help your chosen good cause.

Collection Service
Services offered by all centres vary so please contact individual dealers to check if they offer a collection service

Current Prices Paid
Prices paid by all centres vary so please contact individual dealers for details. Prices are usually quoted per kilo which roughly equates to 65 aluminium drink cans (Dealer prices are not set by Novelis)

Other Cash for Cans Centres - Members of ALUPRO :
There are around 300 businesses nationwide that pay cash for used aluminium drink cans and foil.
These centres are members of the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation (ALUPRO).
Some of the centres listed above work in association with Novelis as well as being members of ALUPRO.

Some centres accept and pay cash for clean aluminium foil for details and listings of more Cash for Cans sites visit: www.alupro.org.uk

http://thinkcans.net
http://thinkcans.net/cash-for-cans/where-can-i-recycle

determined_new_ms

hilarious - absolute legend :rotfl:

justruth

Thanks for the support!

It's not working asking businesses to set cans aside as they produce them! Managers and staff at roller disco were all happy enough for me to have the cans in principle but not so keen on just throwing them in a separate bin! Been busy working other venues but know that their bins are emptied on a Sunday night so may just end up dumpster diving. Other places have refused on the grounds that I do not have a waste carrying license; I looked into this and technically I should have one which would cost £154 min! However if I dumpster dive and recycle it's not such issue???

I contacted Novelis and their minimum weight for registered suppliers is 250kg. I am sure that if I get good at this, then small regular deposites would be the way forward. Meanwhile it has to be cash for cans.

I have a 45L bin with 207 cans in it at the moment and I am thinking room for about another 100. That's going to be between 3 and 4kg so just under £2 or there abouts. I am thinking for the next step to increase the rate of my collections I would like to invest in a litter picker (about £8 from diy store) and a strong bag to put the cans in (for ease of calculation £2). Then I have sturdy work boots, a dark plain hoodie and black combats which would make me look like I was perhaps meant to be collecting the cans from all the messy people round here. Then I would have to invest the time to go out and collect them up. I see just walking down the road to my girlfriends at least 10 cans a trip but still haven't got over myself enough to collect them, effectively losing just under 5p a trip! Still I will get over myself really soon as i am actually terminally skint!

In the short term, there is a lot of fly tipping outside the back door of my block of flats. I have taken to carrying a pair of wire cutters and snipping off the copper cable as I go past to give my first trip the the metal merchants a bit of a boost!

mostlycheerful

Yes, I’m inspired by what you’re doing, good luck mate. If you get stuck in you can turn those debts around and even make a living out of this if you want. I’ve done a bit of recycling for many years and I’m always impressed with other people’s efforts, so well done for doing it and posting it on this forum for other people to learn about and for some people probably to be inspired to do as well.

If you’re recycling cans have you considered tatting, binning and skipping as well? There’s always loads of resaleable stuffed dumped on the streets and in and by bins and in skips, the western world is very wasteful.

All kinds of electrical goods, televisions, dvd players, cd players, speakers, leads, tools, tool boxes, bicycles, exercise bikes, crockery, glassware, tiles, furniture, toys, clothes, books, records, comics, bric a brac etc are all saleable and or recyclable to one degree or another.

There’s a bit of legal restrictions about selling second hand electricals in shops and occasionally there’s enforcement by trading standards and you can get nicked and fined, for instance, a grand (£1,000) for selling an old toaster without getting it checked professionally but so far they’re not known for bothering to try to police the massive ebay, amazon, loot etc markets. Electricals are dangerous so get them checked by a pro outfit or if you know what you’re doing you could get yourself authorised to do the checking and the details about how to do this and what is necessary are on some council and trading standards websites - otherwise you might kill someone, so it’s a serious issue despite the fact that lots of unchecked stuff is routinely sold everywhere.

If you want to go down this route then car boot sales and free street markets might be good ones to start with and if you get up to doing antiques and a van load of furniture as well then market stalls can be lucrative and fun. And if you want to go full time then at the moment due to the recession and the failure of the economy there are literally tens of thousands of empty shops all over the country in every town and you can often get them for a free rent period of 3, 6 and even 12 months and no rates to pay and then cheap payments after that as there is a desperate need to try to get them back into use.

And if you get more serious about it then opening up a full blown scrap yard and or warehouse might also make sense and successful ones can make millions. The bloke who started Carphone Warehouse and Talktalk started in scrap.

Another spectacularly inspiring one that you might find useful or interesting or inspiring to look into is Tom Szaky aged 28 and his now global recycling company TerraCycle. He’s also recently opened up in UK so if you want to take this further then perhaps study his business model and all the clever innovative ground breaking ways of recycling that he and his company are doing and then sign up as one of the volunteer “brigades” collecting material. As your motivation is to get out of debt then perhaps make that known to them and as they’re intelligent and creative they may realise that monetising the collecting may be necessary in order to motivate some people such as yourself. Of course maybe they’ve already considered this and discounted it for practical or business or profit reasons. But Szaky certainly comes across as an imaginative innovative freethinker in the interview so, who knows, possibly he and his team may welcome an approach from you if you present yourself professionally and explain your need to be cut in on the profits of your work otherwise you can’t afford to do it. That would be a fairly compelling and simple proposal, wouldn’t it. And there’s probably hundreds of thousands of money savers in UK who would do some collecting if they were getting fivers and tenners back for their efforts but may not bother if there’s no return to them for their work. Yeah, I would have thought monetising the collecting would take it to a whole extra level.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/businessandecology/recycling/7832655/TerraCycle-The-Google-of-garbage.html

Yeah, the world needs more recycling as, as everyone knows, there’s a terrible amount of waste going on and an appalling pollution problem from all the incineration and landfill so anything we can all do is helpful. If you do any of this then perhaps let us know how you get on as that could be inspiring and useful and helpful for other people. And good luck with the cans, I’m looking forward to reading that you made your first hundred quid. Great stuff, keep up the good work.

justruth

Thanks mostlycheerful, I am at uni full time and work part time so the amount of money that I get from work is more than I anticipate making on the cans. I do believe though that you are right. I honestly believe that if I was really organised and picked any large bin in the street I could probably recycle 90% and there is money in every type of material you recycle, just not always enough to make it worthwhile taking the materials to recycling centre.

Aluminium cans are the most available material at relatively high returns, which is why I am focusing on them. Going to get more dumpster diving going on!

justruth

I really can't help but be marginally annoyed tonight. I am in one of the venues I work, who were happy enough for me to collect the aluminium cans. They said that they would, but just haven't, so I brought along a bin specifically for them, working on the principle that this might be the issue. The 'bus boys' turned around and said that they would not put the cans in my bin, as I was going to make cash from them! I told them that there has been nothing stopping them doing the same thing, but if they feel it immoral to allow me to have the cans, then they should continue to throw them in the bin.

They always complain that the bins are over flowing, and that they do not have the room to put in the rest of the bags, but this would put them out! Never mind I'll just have to go old fashioned and pull the rubbish out myself.

I have purchased my litter picker, I have my combats and hoodie, I am going to make a little more effort at this. I have a shift back here tomorrow for the family event, so I shall turn up early and dumpster dive. Then as the family event goes on I will collect the cans, then in the evening I will know which bins have been 'processed' and which ones haven't, so it won't take too long to sort through and collect.

I'm JUSTRUTH! I decided to collect 2million cans, so it's going to happen!

tiff

Fair play to you, I'm interested in how you get on.

KrazyKel

We put out a bag of tin cans out for recycling most weeks, didnt know about the tesco clubcard points
I have a tesco clubcard somewhere (havent shopped in tesco until recently, when they opened a new one near me) will ask for a replacement and think about doing the clubcard thing

I think we have around 50+ here already, having 4 cats, we go through 2 tins of catfood a day, and always are drinking pepsimax and have loads of drink cans too!