5 ms·

For $0.10 a can, I don't see this strategy being profitable.

• ars 8y ago
  A sheet of paper can easily hold 60 barcodes, and costs about 5 cents to copy. A pack of gluesticks is $1 and can handle hundreds of bottles.
  • moate 8y ago
    Okay, so you're down to $.0499 (aprox) per bottle. That's not taking into account the time needed to do this, or the time needed to collect the bottles, or the gas/equipment needed to haul the bottles. This sounds like a dozens of dollars level scam, not millions.
    • ars 8y ago
      $0.05 and 10 seconds per bottle is $18/hour, which is decent. (Although that doesn't account for actually getting the bottle, or travel, or redeeming the bottle which isn't very fast.) > not millions No, not individually, but if tons of people are doing it all day, it adds up. And bumping the fee to $0.10 makes it $36/hour which is very attractive to someone who doesn't have a job. Again, the actual earnings are lower, but I think it's a realistic type of fraud.
      • moate 8y ago
        This plan doesn't scale. You can't bump the fee to $.10 an hour because there's fixed costs associated with this specific plan (paper, glue, transportation, etc). There is a viable way to do recycling fraud, but DIY stickers isn't it.
  • megy 8y ago
    And time is free. Just get prisoners to do it. And then you have to ship the bottles to them, of course, unload, and load them back.