Going Green - Recycling Cast Aluminum

[Apoptosis]

I'm trying to be environmentally friendly as much as I can so i began recycling cast aluminum the past six months. I've saved up 40 pounds of just cast aluminum, which I was proud of as that was half a year of saving. Now that winter is here I wanted to clean up the garage so I took it a few towns over to cash it in. Included in this pile were a Jeep wrangler bell housing, a John Deere transmission case, two Briggs and Stratton 5HP engines cases and some other cast aluminum parts. I remember a few months back cast aluminum was going for $0.65 a pound, so I figured I had ~$25 worth of scrap. I get up there today and cast aluminum is going for $0.15 a pound now and the guy handed me $6 for my 41 pounds… I used about that to get there and back in gas…

Going green doesn't pay, but at least i saved 41 pounds of aluminum from going to the dump. Any one else here recycle?

[Darkstar]

yep, newspaper, cardboard and glass go into a recycle bin.

saving copper from the remodel stuff right now and i take cans, plastic, and glass bottles in for cash (make some money back from the contractors and crew....lol

Used to have a mulch pile out back where all the eggshells, coffee grinds and vegtable waste went for compost, planning on starting that up again too.

[XstollieX]

I just too some steel turnings and a bit of copper to the recylcer last week. 222lbs of steel and 5 pounds of copper and got a whole $8.69 Baraly covered my gas. Steel was $.02 per # and I believe the copper was at .85 per#. I thought it would be more.

[bubba]

paper, steel, and alum scrap goes in the bins at work. Cans, magazines, and batteries go to a guy at work that turns them into his kids school.

PC parts at work go in the pile in the corner for repairs or recycle (depending on the age), personal parts go to family first then the bay.

[martini161]

for me: we have this thing for recylce bank for alumninum and paper that assigns you points based on how much you recylce, the points can be turned in for coupons. as for electronics: they go to me and either i do somethign withum or they go in the crap cabinets down stairs.

[Apoptosis]

who recycles batteries?? I have some old APC units from a side job and I don't want to toss the batteries. I called my local Office Max and they don't recycle batteries from the APC units they sell.

[Alathald]

The Radioshack I work at takes (and recycles) old batteries...IDK if they all do or not though. Worth a shot.

[bubba]

Any of Battery Plus stores should take them, Rat Shack, and most municipalities have a battery program.

[Illuminati]

Amy and I recycle and have it picked up from the house every wednesday morning by WM. After reading this thread, I'm satisfied with paying $2 a month and not have to drive somewhere to drop it off myself.

[Darkstar]

who recycles batteries?? I have some old APC units from a side job and I don't want to toss the batteries. I called my local Office Max and they don't recycle batteries from the APC units they sell.

here in San Diego we can drop them at a recycle center and a couple times a year they set up a e waste recycle site where you can drop batteries, computer parts etc. might want to check the local govnt pages online.

http://www.ecyclestlouis.org/what.php

I also save the toner cartridges for my kids school and they get money for the school in return....

[Apoptosis]

Amy and I recycle and have it picked up from the house every wednesday morning by WM. After reading this thread, I'm satisfied with paying $2 a month and not have to drive somewhere to drop it off myself.

Well I recycle all my cans, bottles, plastic, paper, cardboard and so on weekly with the trash company... the service is free though... you pay to recycle?

[Sporg]

We have a little center setup in the garage for each item that we recycle. Plastic bags, plastic bottles, glass bottles, tin cans, aluminum cans, newspaper, chipboard, and corrugate. We don't have curbside recycling but there is a convient drop point (at Walmart of all places) where we take it on our way to buy groceries. So no extra fuel spent on moving it around. I found that our weekly trash output has decreased dramatically. We've also stopped using waterbottles because we really started to see how much plastic we were using.

For batteries I usually take those to work because we have a battery recycling program here. For electronics a nearby city sponsors an event about every 6 months where you can drop off. I think on 60 minutes a few weeks ago there was a story about a lot of the electronics stuff getting sent to China. It really was pretty disgusting.

Do you guys recycle cell phones? I keep my old ones because I use them for testing or you never know when someone needs one. For the really old ones I get mailers from Sprint stores and ship them off. So if you have old cell phones laying around just go to a Sprint store and get a postage-paid mailer and drop the handset and charger in there and mail it off. I'm not sure if the other major carriers have a similar deal or not, but I do know that Sprint doesn't care which carrier the phone belongs to.

[Illuminati]

Amy and I recycle and have it picked up from the house every wednesday morning by WM. After reading this thread, I'm satisfied with paying $2 a month and not have to drive somewhere to drop it off myself.

Well I recycle all my cans, bottles, plastic, paper, cardboard and so on weekly with the trash company... the service is free though... you pay to recycle?

Ya, Wright City doesn't quite have the tax revenue that Wentzville does ;)

[stev]

Since moving from up north to the mid south, I've notice that the roadways a full of aluminum cans. This state here doesn't have a can/bottle return value on them. What a waste of good metal! Most cars consume all kinds of aluminum today. One would figure that recycling the stuff that the prices would stop rising or get lowered.

[hercules71185]

Down here they are thinking about banning recycling. The cost of the transporting, fuel and man hours is costing more than producing goods from scratch.

[Dragon_Cooler]

Down here they are thinking about banning recycling. The cost of the transporting, fuel and man hours is costing more than producing goods from scratch.

banning recycling, thats a new one on me. LOL WOW!

I should, but living in an apt its a little harder to do so.

[Skippman]

We also pay for that in unincorporated St. Louis county. I throw almost nothing away and my recycling bin is almost entirely full.

[hercules71185]

There was this girl down where I used to live in Stuart Fl, she was about 7 at the time. Her and her dad went around weekly to pick up the cans and donated half of the money to charity and the other half was for her. It started off very small, but over time so many people started donating to her. Come on, cute little girl in a dress asking you to please save your cans and put them outside on saturday afternoon. Great tactic. Needless to say she was a self made millionaire by the time she hit 9. OFF CANS!!! They had a pick up truck with a trailer on the back that had a tarp to hold the bags down. They made an average of 10 trips to the recycling place on saturday the original day. After that they had to make a program for different places and different days of the week. Talk about easy money. Hell if you want to do this with limited overhead. Rent a uhaul for a set day a week. 20 bucks a day. 20 miles. Start off slow, but you can make it up over time. Come on I sell water Puirfciatoin ( I did that on purpose in case it shows up in a search), and alarms. AT YOUR DOOR!! People think door knockers don't make money. Within the last 6 months my lowest check for a week was $1120. That was my slack week. Beach or boat till 4. Start working from 5-7. If I can make money doing this you can't tell me you couldn't do it with cans.


We should start a LR recycling team. I'd be down. Hell tell the people you will give them money back even if it's 20% they will be stoked. Right now it COSTS them to do it. Obviously you can't do this with 1 bag of cans. You have to find a local recycling place and work within a 5 mile radius of it. Keep it low and make sure the cans are not put on the street people will steal them. Put it outside their doors. You might have to walk, but we fold for a cause right? Why not do something else where we can all start up a team.. and make money? If you live local to me I'll teach you the art of knocking lol. I will bet you can go 1 day a week within a month (redundancy works) you can bring in 50 a week. Within 2 you can make 100 a week. This is with one slack day.

[hercules71185]

PS think how this works. For them to drive to the place and back not only wastes time, but gas. Aside from that one persons weekly can usage is not enough to really make anything. Since you can't tally up each person go by a full bag is X amount. Half bag is 1/2x for the mathematicians out there.