Plastic Waste For Cash

This is real trash, plastic packaging. Milk packs of our own, accepted because of the plastic lining. Why collect and separate to cash it in for very little? In the past the only way to get rid of my own was the big grey bag. Then special containers came, not obliged but citizens were requested to drop the stuff there. No compensation. Being eco of course it did it. Just like for the glass jars and bottles that I've been used to since my earliest childhood. Then the city announced new machines in trash processing would do the job for the plastics and the containers disappeared. 

But not that long after the recycle shop opened and bringing the waste of my own plus what I find rewarded me in the beginning with €15 cents a kilo, now even 20.

The lot here is about 800 grams, good for about €17 cents. But I'll add another large bread bag full tomorrow afternoon or after tomorrow and will claim at least the 1 kilo at €20 cents or more. Is it worth the trouble for such petty cash? Definitely. I did the separating for nothing before. For dropping it off in the container I had to make a small detour on the way to groceries anyway. Now I make the detour to the recycle center instead, it only takes a couple of minutes extra for the administration to get my reward.

Plus sometimes I combine with other things like e-waste, flattened cans or textiles and shoes. Thus I have weekly additions of tiny amounts in my account that add up to once in a while help me through that one difficult day before the big pay comes. 

Electronic Or Electrical Waste

Two bags full of old electrical appliances or e-waste, by experience I guess up to 15 kilo's, ready to go to recycle shop. Will make me only around €1,50, but with added bonus points, to redeem later for cash. Seems like a lot of work for peanuts, but it's not that bad. There are a possibly working tuner and milk warmer, but I don't even take the trouble of testing, then making product photo's and waiting for an unsure sale. The amount was collected in just four days, not that I find that much all the time, but it takes me ten minutes to walk the bags hanging from my bike handlebars to the shop and it's a sure fire direct payment for 80 % real trash: two broken chease sandwhich makers, a printer, an out of date dvd-player and two ancient keyboards. And I just picked this up on the way to or coming back from groceries.

With the other things they take, plastic and textiles I manage to get up to €15 a month. That adds up to other things, better than I did sometimes in the past just relying on selling usable trashed goods.

A Soup Of Earphones

I don't normally 'do' public trash bins. I leave that to the homeless looking for deposit bottles and cans. But one evening shortly, coming home from work fairly early and passing by, I took the time to walk around the square of the Amsterdam Central Station, hoping to get some deposit just to grab from the pavement. I got some, but then there were bins with the door opened by the scavengers, plastic bag half hanging out. Just like this one. Photo from internet but in the street running from the CS.

Then I saw this huge knot of wires on top of one pretty full bag. E-waste has a kilo price and it was easy to get out without getting my hands dirty I thought. But there was more deep down than I expected and I kept digging and digging up the soup... until I started to hit real muck and had to stop. But I think in all I got some 90 % out.

It was a weird experience and it won't make me a lot of money but I don't regret it.

I just really wonder, who has two kilos of (unused) earphones and needs to get rid of them in a public trash can?

Vacuum Cleaners

Having the recycle center in the neighbourhood brings trash picking to a new dimension for me. Where before I looked for saleables, or stuff I need for me, now I can pick up a lot more and get rid of it straight away for cash, allbeit not much. And get rid of unsold stuff without much effort.

So today I went with two bags of textiles, cleared out of banana boxes in my bedroom. Most were cloths and I'm not even sure any more where from. Only two I remember buying at a discount over 30 years ago and if I hadn't used them by now I am not going to anymore. Pity, but.

The rest were mainly curtain coupons. Most likely my friend gave them to me and if she did, she found them on the curbs in her part of town. A few forgotten pieces of clothing I didn't care to keep.

The fun is that on the way to the shop, at a 100 yards or so, I found a (cordless) stick vacuum cleaner, of which the interesting electric part just fitted in my back bicycle bag, together wit a media box (digital tv-receiver). But there was also a printer that I couldn't take, so I decided to come back for it. Then I was in the shop and after cashing the textiles, before doing the e-waste I said, wait, I'm going for the printer around the corner, can you hold my stuff for a moment? As they tend to round down the weight it's more lucrative to have it all together and pay out at once. They are all very nice there so no problem.

So on top of €0,95 fot the textiles I had an additional 0,89 for trash that had never even seen my house!

Here's another vacuum cleaner that is going there soon. Found across the street years ago. It's a bagless model and it works, so I wanted to keep it as an extra to my still perfectly working AEG that was given to me. However, though being a Philips it may be an early model or so, getting any dust in I need to turn it to full power, which makes a terrible noise and scares me of the thing exploding or cause a power short cut. Otherwise dust seems to not want to pass the filter. I could take that out but then? To say simply I don't like it and maybe the previous owners for the same reason.

Bad Trash Behaviour

This electric or convection heater looks brand new. It was not out on trash night but in broad day light on a corner with a glass container nest to to regular trash underground bin. Comparables sold at Dutch shop (but owned by A.S. Watson) Kruidvat but with brand names like Auronic or Tristar depending on size from €31,50 (mine) to €18,00 for the smaller one. Would have been a pretty good thing to sell this time of the year even if without a brand. But the thing is dead. A Monday morning product. Maybe it's just a little contact somewhere but I don't know how to fix it. I do the inventories for Kruidvat and see the stuff in backrooms brought back. Every one in so many of such (Chinese) cheap makes is useless.

Just puzzles me. If I pay for something that is not working, it goes back to the shop. But otherwise, if I'd have too much money, I'd cut the cable off at least to make clear it's broken. 

Never mind for me this is still e-waste money, but the weight is minimal it won't make me much. But apart from that it will prevent someone else's disappointment.

Miele Vacuum Cleaner Bags

When I was a kid vacuum cleaners were all equipped with the same simple square paper bags to collect the dust, and they came very cheaply. 

I had them up until the early Nineties, one from my grandmother and one from her sister in law, till they both gave up. Model above from 1976. Mine were even older.

Newer models with better dust filtering and other improvements came up, all fine with me but what just bugs me is why do they all have to have their own special bags, with kind of a cardboard or now even plastic keys to fit the thing in, and otherwise your machine just won't work! Every brand even has varieties. And on top they are expensive. I wonder why nobody has ever thought about negotiating a standard for this to prevent waste of unused bags from broken machines. Like they do currently about cables for phones and other e-gadgets. And has kind of existed forever for AV equipment already.

Bagless models are being developed and maybe improved of course, but as far as I know affordable ones are not ideal yet. Like the one I sold for trash.

For myself I'm currently good with my AEG that I got around 2006 from a neighbour who went to a home. It still has the cardboard 'keys', and I can cut them of and stick over to non-fitting bags. Plus I have a set from the thrift shop, recently found to last me long enough.

But going through old photo's I found these from 2011! Curb found for sure and most likely in front of my door. That is pure luck. I had forgotten because never shared, but now I'm quite sure I reused the card board pieces for as long as they lasted.

So long story short, when I found this set of in total 18 bags in March I had no need to keep them and listed, asked €7,50, got €8,50. Buyer paid €12 including shipping, would have cost him over €20,00 (best deal I found) buying new on line.

Just for fun I packed them in a crazy luxury bag...

For real, this simply had the size, shape and firmness I needed. After stapling it all up it didn't look so stylish anymore. And for me antoher one gone from the lot I also use for books.