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<snip> Gary Phillips purchased a $400 airline ticket to Hawaii three months ago. He was homeless in San Diego for years, but is now earning cash from Hawaii's 5

<snip> Gary Phillips purchased a $400 airline ticket to Hawaii three months ago. He was homeless in San Diego for years, but is now earning cash from Hawaii's 5-cent redemption program for plastic bottles and aluminum cans. "I recycle here," he says. "I make money doing that." Some days, over $40, he says. </snip> So, he collects roughly 800 recyclables a day to earn an average of $40/day. He obviously uses some of that $40 in the local economy as his social services are only costing him $3/day. He receives: "And he sleeps at the IHS shelter for $3 a day, with three free meals, $200 worth of food stamps and the state's free health care program." I'm assuming the $200 in food stamps are per month. Perhaps this system, at least for this anecdote, is optimized. Could the state have state employees with all employee benefits doing collections of recyclables for this amount? Could the state manage a prisoner work program to collect recyclables for less? Is this homeless person taking money from someone else in the local economy that otherwise would have collected the recyclables?

jackfoxy 16y ago
I don't know the actual numbers involved. Let's assume the recyclable deposit is $.05. If Gary is collecting 800 improperly disposed containers (i.e. litter) per day, the argument the state is getting a good deal is valid. But I suspect the vast majority of the containers were fished out of trash recepticles. The marginal cost to the state of hauling recyclables from a trash bin to the land-fill, and the marginal cost of adding to the land-fill has got to be way below $.05. So I suspect it is not such a good deal for the state.
- fleitz 16y ago
  Generally in states that have a refund the purchase is charged to the consumer so the state isn't paying anything for the service. Of course you'd have to add in administration of the program itself, which is a relatively fixed cost independent of whether people return bottles or not.
  - jackfoxy 16y ago
    That't right. So when the container is NOT returned, the state is in the money. The benefit to the state is when homeless pick up litter. There is no benefit in paying out a deposit for a container retrieved from a trash bin.
_delirium 16y ago
It's actually been suggested (can't seem to find where I read it, though) that the bottle/can deposit fee is partly a way of increasing recycling rates by finding a clever way to pay people way below minimum wage to collect litter and separate recyclables out of trash, which would otherwise cost too much to be feasible. (Some states do have facilities that try to separate recyclables out of the general waste stream, but it's hard to do, and expensive.)

jackfoxy 16y ago

I don't know the actual numbers involved. Let's assume the recyclable deposit is $.05. If Gary is collecting 800 improperly disposed containers (i.e. litter) per day, the argument the state is getting a good deal is valid. But I suspect the vast majority of the containers were fished out of trash recepticles. The marginal cost to the state of hauling recyclables from a trash bin to the land-fill, and the marginal cost of adding to the land-fill has got to be way below $.05. So I suspect it is not such a good deal for the state.

fleitz 16y ago
Generally in states that have a refund the purchase is charged to the consumer so the state isn't paying anything for the service. Of course you'd have to add in administration of the program itself, which is a relatively fixed cost independent of whether people return bottles or not.
- jackfoxy 16y ago
  That't right. So when the container is NOT returned, the state is in the money. The benefit to the state is when homeless pick up litter. There is no benefit in paying out a deposit for a container retrieved from a trash bin.

_delirium 16y ago

It's actually been suggested (can't seem to find where I read it, though) that the bottle/can deposit fee is partly a way of increasing recycling rates by finding a clever way to pay people way below minimum wage to collect litter and separate recyclables out of trash, which would otherwise cost too much to be feasible. (Some states do have facilities that try to separate recyclables out of the general waste stream, but it's hard to do, and expensive.)