I'm currently picking up pop cans / bottles for recyling to get gas money for the remainder of my trip.......they're all over the place here.......in two days I have 1003 cans and 46 plastic pop bottles and I think 18 glass bottles.
I got fustrated trying to find odd jobs, so a freind of mine reminded me that when we were younger (from ages 7-12 mostly, but sometimes as teenagers) when we needed extra money we'd go pick up pop cans / bottles and turn 'em in for money......so I decided to give it a shot.
We had also done it (as teenagers) as something to do during summer........grab a bag (or several bags) fill it (or them) up with cans / bottles and then turn 'em in at the end of the day for cash..........but when I was younger I'd save 'em up for a few weeks or so until I had enough for whatever I was wanting (or until mom said our back yard looked like we were running our own recyling center and made me take them to the center).
The most I ever made saving them was like $183 when I was 10 yrs old. I had been saving them up for about 3 weeks. Turning them in daily during the summer.........I dunno maybe like $8 or $9 for the day.
The good side: pop cans / bottles are EVERYWHERE around here. As I said above I've gotten over 1,000 cans in less than two full days (and I'm not done for today yet either). Also a select few can make the trip with me down to OR and I can get 5 cents each ($1.25 / lb) for them (here in WA it's 1.4 - 1.7 cents each (35 to 40 cents / lb) depending where I take 'em for the cans...........and only the bottles (glass and plastic) are taken to OR cuz I can't find any centers here in my area of WA that pay for them......but OR also pays 5 cents for each bottle.
The bad side: It's a lot of work to gather all the cans I can find (and I do find a lot) and then sort them ("WA" cans from "OR" cans) then get the OR ones to the safeway down there and find out that either the machine is broken or that it rejects like 2/3 of the bottles / cans I have and I have to take 'em to WA after all.........fortunately it's only about a 12 mile drive, but still it's kinda fustrating. And then smashing down the "WA" cans so I can fit a lot of cans into as few bags as possible (I take them to the center in my Toyota Camry.........which is already nearly filled to maximum capacity, so I need to conserve room while getting enough cans in there to make it worth the trip).
Around here they also pay 1 cent / lb for newspaper and cardboard (which is really good cuz I use to turn in newspaper for 1/4 of a cent / lb when I was a kid), but I don't pick either of those up cuz I don't have enough room in my car to get enough down there to make it worth the effort.
I do occasionally take "scrap metal" (catalytic converters, wheel rims, car radiators, etc) down..........I get 45 cents / lb for the radiators (which mechanics throw away quite frequently here) and 6 cents / lb for the scrap metal and $7.50 / ea for the catalytic converters........I usually only bother with the catalytic converters / scrap metal if I'm needing a few extra bucks for the day...........radiators I save until I've got 2-5 sometimes a little more if I'm only going to take the radiators for that trip I could possibly get 10-12 in my car without too much of a problem then I take them down (the other day I had two that weighed 39 lbs total
......I thought they were closer to 10 to 15 lbs combined )Anywho.........I'm hyper (as if you couldn't tell)........so I'm gonna grab something to eat (after a "few more" posts), then get out for my evening "route" to see how much more I can pick up.
Peace Out
-Gimp
He isn't quite as fanatical any more.
)
My aunt is really into recycling though, and she gets upset when she sees us throw away plastic bottles. 
j/k.......sorta 