Make money from recycling

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi everyone!

Our former MSE staff Rebecca Rutt wrote this Daily Mail article on How to Make Money from your Recycling.

Has anyone made cash from their old jam jars, corks etc? How much have you made? Do you use eBay, Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree?

PasturesNew

I don't have these things in the first instance.

If you are a wanton consumer, you'll have lots of recycling.

There's no money in my empty frozen chips bag.

She does also say in the article "if you've space to store them" - so it's for people with larger houses. It might make more sense to downsize the house than the use an entire room to store old jars and bog rolls.

Looking at the example list/chart printed in the article - those items are not in my life to start with:

60 Toilet roll tubes - this would take 6 months to collect.
35 Kitchen roll tubes - 3 years
60 Jam jars - 30 years
100 Green milk bottle lids - forever, any colour would work out at 25 years
25 Wine bottle corks - forever, I don't have wine
200 Can ring pulls - 2-3 years
100 Champagne and Prosecco corks - forever, I don't have champagne/prosecco
19 Glass dessert ramekins dishes - I don't even know what these are, to be honest
50 Old silver clothes hangers - not seen these for 20+ years
10 Coffee tins - no idea what these even are

In short, this article is "a bit of fluff" and realistically not of any use to anybody's real life. All it does is gets her blog some free publicity ... presumably she mixes socially with somebody who works at the DM.

VfM4meplse

Interesting idea as I don't like to throw money away...but I have even less of a desire to collect this junk in the hope of making a few pounds here and there. I'd rather just get rid of anything that accumulates and makes the place look untidy.

The LO has hours of fun with empty kitchen roll tubes, though

[Deleted User]

a nonesense pointless article, encouraging more people to hoard rubbish. Me, well I prefer to give my unused items away, to people in need. Life is not all about greed and money

LameWolf

Many years ago, I managed to acquire, over a period of a good many months, enough scrap copper - mainly from old electrical wire innards - to be worth selling, but that's the only time I've made actual cash from recycling.

I'll use the list PN posted and give my take on those items, just for comparison.:o

60 Toilet roll tubes - probably take about three or four months, and tbh, I chuck 'em in the pink sack.
35 Kitchen roll tubes - 10 years or more
60 Jam jars - I keep what few empties I get and reuse. To amass an extra 60 would take about 20 years minimum, as I reuse what I have for HM jam and marmalade. The only time I get a new-to-me jar is when I get honey.
100 Green milk bottle lids - Do you mean plastic lids? If so this would take a year roughly.
25 Wine bottle corks - forever, we tend to buy wine with screw tops
100 Champagne and Prosecco corks - Roughly 10 years
19 Glass dessert ramekins dishes - Forever - I don't buy desserts, I make my own.
50 Old silver clothes hangers - Don't get these, ever.
10 Coffee tins - Don't get these; I have a couple indoors that were given to me as storage tins, I keep some of my candle-making stuff in them.

Ilona

I sometimes use my own rubbish for crafting, like make a shopping bag with cat food pouches, or cut out flower embellishments from aluminium drinks cans, but I wouldn't buy other people's rubbish. Nor would I hoard my rubbish with the view to selling it, that's just plain daft.

Ilona

culpepper

Toilet roll tubes we make them into fire lighters for camping
Kitchen roll tubes as above
Jam jars use for making jam/pickles etc
Green milk bottle lids Milk bottles???
Wine bottle corks dont drink plonk
Can ring pulls very rare to have drink in cans
Champagne and Prosecco corks dont drink champers
Glass dessert ramekins dishes good grief !
Old silver clothes hangers who has these?
Coffee tins we have about 3 of these a year and they become storage

I remember looking at how many pop tins it would need to be worth litter picking them (I see lots every time I go out) and it was so many it wasn't worth it.

I can see what the article writer means but really they would have to look at it as an obsession to collect enough of these things to be worth it. Remember when the scouts used to collect such things?
Tin foil, bottle tops, old newspapers and presumably they could still do that if their scout leaders could be bothered to do the ebaying part but of course that was a joint effort for collecting and why it was worth it to them in the first place.

ariarnia

I recycle to save money - does that count?

[Deleted User]

I too would find it difficult to store all the rubbish,even if I had a garage (which I no longer have) plus the inclination (also missing ):):):)

Farway

I read the article, and the DM readers letters, and it all falls into "clickbait" IMO

Probably worth recycling the article on the 1st April

suki1964

Good grief, why would you want to store rubbish?

I've a huge house and I still wouldn't want to fill it with rubbish

Toilet roll /kitchen roll tubes are firefighters or treat dispensers for the cat

Jam jars. I always have one under the sink to tip used cooking oil/fat into. We have a septic tank, only biogradable waste gets put down the drains


Wine bottle corks - we buy wine by the box

Ring pulls, well yes we could save those but we leave them on the can and crush the cans

Glass ramekins, we don't buy shop bought desserts

Champagne corks? If we lived a champagne lifestyle I wouldn't be worrying about making a few pennies flogging used corks

Silver coat hangers from dry cleaners? Hand wash cycle on the machine works for me

Coffee tins, bought a new tin today. Last one sat in the cupboard had BB 2015 and the coffee had gone rock hard lol