What's the point of people collecting pop/beer cans from others garbage cans?

Question

What's the point of digging them up from out of my/anybody elses garbage can before garbage day pick up???. One day I saw this man single handidly picked up a refridgerater and loaded it in this shopping cart!
what's the value of aluminum that makes people dig/pick cans out of the sh***y stincky garbage cans????????????
I admit I'm guilty of throwing away all pop/beer cans,and I know that garbage mills recycle it. What's the point of people picking cans out of the garbage...what do they do once they pick the cans out of the garbage,what do they do with the cans they pick up?????????????????????

excuse me.... for being naive...I'm far from being a brat! :()

Answer 1

Recycling. I saved up Aluminum Cans over six months,rather than dispose of them, and got over $85 ! I didn't have to dig through the Garbage for them, but a lot of People do. Plus, it's much better for the environment , since they don't end up in the landfill. If you were ever hungry, and didn't know where your next meal was coming from, then you would understand why people collect cans from the trash.

Answer 2

Depending on were you live you could come home to find out all your aluminum siding is gone, be happy its just cans and junk. And whats it to them, a truck full of siding could net you a couple hundred bucks at the scrap yard. Whats that about seven or eight bags of groceries? Its a sign of the times just like having a hard time at the pawn shops lately, their selling not buying much. How many weeks could you go without a job and get by? Ive seen 300 gal. propane tanks disapere in the night in a pretty much safe neighborhood in ruale MI

Answer 3

Excuse me but garbage collecters don't go through your garbage. If you don't seperate it, your garbage all goes into a land fill. So the poor person that is picking the cans out of your garbage is actually doing us all a favor.

Answer 4

Because it is easy money when you collect them but i don't think it is enough money when you actually have to go through the garbage for them. i say people should just save them and then recycle them for money we did that once and we got a decent amount of money for the garbage that we were going to throw away.

Answer 5

The fridge could have been servicable, so I understand that much. The pop/beer cans and bottles are redeemable and worth quite a lot of dough in the long run.

Answer 6

they get paid by the weight at metal recycling centers. The amount per pound changes daily. We took all of our cans(a few bags) to a center and made enough cash for gas for the week. it is also good for the enviro

Answer 7

1st some people truly feel that to be good steward of the earth that God has given us that we must do our best to keep from filling up landfills.
2nd some people don't have much opportunity to make money.
One mans trash is anothers treasure. They take all that can be recycled to collect the salvage value of it to make enough (maybe) to live on.

Answer 8

@$3.00 per pound for aluminum cans , that's 14-18 cans.
Yellow brass for $119 per ton , White brass for $129 per ton
tin for $ 68 per ton . etc .

While metals are up the money is very good
You can spend 4 hours per day and make around $75-150 per day without tax's

Answer 9

check out the prices at your nearest recycling center and that will explain it, copper is over $2.00 a lb, people are climbing live power poles just to steal it, one couple went into an old building and stole $25,000.00 worth of copper wire

Answer 10

You need to be more patient with the people who are without. You are too judgemental and bitter- and it only hurts you. They need the 5 cents a can fro recycling.... Negativity will come back to you- so just wish them well. Hope that they find a warm place to sleep.