Money for nothing...or not!

Since September we have been saving aluminum cans for recycling.  Our small town does not have curb side recycling pick up, but the county does have a recycling center just a few blocks away.  I thought it would be a good learning lesson for the boys and what the heck...we are doing something good for the environment, so it is a win-win situation!

Let me tell you that we drink A LOT of sodas in this house!  We are also lazy and it is just easier to grab a can out of the fridge than to get a glass, fill it with ice and then pour in our favorite soft drink...terrible, I know!!  We have been very good about tossing our cans into a separate trash bin in the kitchen.  Occasionally, I have to fish one of out the regular garbage, but all in all, everyone has been "pitching in"!

Last Friday the boys were out of school, so I thought it would be a good day to take our ever growing collection to the local center.  We had 8 garbage bags full of cans.  It was beginning to look like a dump site in our garage!!!  I was embarrassed for people to see it and wonder what we were thinking! 

I knew the center would actually pay us for the cans, but I will say that this was not really a factor in me wanting to save these cans.  I did think that whatever they paid us would go in the boy's piggy bank or we could use it to buy a new game for the Wii or Xbox. 

When we got the center, we pulled in right behind another customer who was also dropping off cans.  This lady had a truck bed full of  lawn size trash bags stuffed to the top with nothing but beer cans.  Many of these beer cans still had beer in them and after she left the place smelled awful!  They drink A LOT of beer in that house...A LOT  of cheap beer too!  We had to wait about twenty minutes for the very nice Hispanic man to go thru all of her bags.  I don't think this lady was recycling her cans to help the environment either!

It didn't take him long to go thru all of the 8 bags that we brought.  Our nice, clean cans! He weighed the bags, printed out a ticket and I followed him inside the office.  Since I was not a return customer, they had to set up an account for me and make a copy of my driver's license.  They keep a record of all items that are dropped off for scrap for the local police...scrap metal/aluminum/copper is a huge business for criminals.  I assured the man inside the office that these were our cans...no stolen ones here! 

We turned in 22 lbs of aluminum cans...he gave me $5.25!  Yes, you read that correctly, $5.25!  The guy in the office told me when I left that I could use that money to go buy a few drinks as Sonic!  It definitely won't buy a new game for the Wii or the Xbox...a few drinks at Sonic is right!  We will still save our cans because it is the right thing to do, but we definitely aren't doing it for the money!