New York State Recycling

At best, the State of New York is trying to encourage recycling. At worst, it’s robbing its people. As a resident of New York, I find my state’s stance on recycling troubling.

When I first moved to New York, I thought, “wow, this is great, they’re going to pay me money to recycle my cans and bottles.” I am a fool.

You actually don’t get paid shit.

The state will charge you an extra $0.05 per can and bottle to encourage/force you to recycle when you buy the product. They recycle everything else. A recycling truck will come to your house and pick up your glass jars, your paper products, and even your cans and bottles. The stores just charge you an extra $0.05 per can and bottle. It’s stupid.

The other day, I went into staples and bought a Sprite. I walked around Staples, drinking the Sprite, and then instead of throwing away the empty bottle, I walked up the cashier and paid for it. He saw it was empty and was nice enough to throw it in the trash for me. He handed me a receipt. That young punk charged me the $0.05 and never gave me the chance to get it back.

The state makes a killing off of this money. I don’t see how the people of New York are so comfortable with all this. They are either stupid or apathetic. It’s probably a combination of the two and may depend on your economic situation. Either way, I call on all my New York residents to write a letter or two if you find the time.

Where do you return these cans and bottles? Oh no, not recycling or redemption center, that would be too easy. You take them back to the supermarket in which you bought them. But if you buy discount cola from A&P, you can’t take those cans to Shop Rite. If you buy a fancy case of beer from the distributor, you can’t get your money back unless the supermarket also sells the same brand of beer.

This is how it works: You take a bag of cans and bottles up to a fat reverse vending machine. You stick your can or bottle into a slot one at a time. The machine scans the can or bottle and either swallows it or coughs it back at you saying “this machine does not accept this brand.” It’ll spit out a receipt in which you take to customer service. If you have less than a dozen bottles or cans, they’ll take those for you (if they wouldn’t go into the machine). All in all, it’s a lot of stupid effort for less than a couple bucks. I have a huge bin in my apartment right now filled with bottles that these machines won’t take, and I don’t know what to do with them.

Eventually, I’ll either find a way to get my money back, or I won’t get my money back.


You can read more about it all here:

~http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/8500.html

Want to know what happens to all that extra money?

~http://www.bottlebill.org/about/unclaimed.htm

~http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/nyregion/westchester/08bottlewe.html?_r=1

Want to know how you can help stop this stupid backward idea of recycling?

~http://www.realrecyclingreform.com/