When the Granite Geek column in Tuesday’s Monitor said there were no alternatives for people who want to keep recycling even after their town ends the program due to cost, it wasn’t quite accurate.
You can take your aluminum cans to Chichester.
The Epsom-Chichester Lions Club collects the cans outside the Chichester Fire Station and sells the metal for its charitable activities. Various Lions Clubs around the country do the same, although it’s more common in states with can and bottle deposits that can be redeemed.
Can collection by charities was fairly common before widespread local recycling efforts arose. The price of cans has fallen along with most recycled materials since China stopped accepting all but the best-quality items last year but it still has value, around 35 cents per pound or one cent per can as of this writing.
Other material that was collected by charities year ago, such as old newspaper, is now worth so little, or even has negative value, that it’s not worth collecting as a fund-raising item.
Clothes and shoes can be given to charities for fund-raising or to be re-used via specialized containers that can be seen at stores and other public locations. Several companies run such programs for charities.
There are many other specialized programs for recycling or reusing products such as computers, so do an internet search before throwing them into the trash.
Incidentally, sometimes you hear about another possibility for aluminum cans and glass bottles: Take them across the state border and redeem them for a deposit, which also gets them into that state’s recycling system.
Except, don’t. It’s illegal.
Maine, which has one of the nation’s more extensive deposit laws, has begun cracking down on the practice of cross-border redemption after a report said the value of containers illegally redeemed in the state was at least $1.2 million. Like all states, it has fines on the books for the practice, although it has been rarely enforced in the past.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection notes even though it’s not always obvious to consumers whether a can or bottle has been bought in New Hampshire, sometimes its Stock Keeping Unit number – the SKU, pronounced “skew” – indicates the location of the sale. This means, at the very least, your can will be rejected by those automatic-deposit-returning machines.
The money for deposits comes from beverage distributors, not the government, so if you do manage to sneak some deposit money from another state, they’re the ones who are paying you.
If you know of other charities that collects household recyclables – cans, bottles, paper, plastic – as a fundraiser or as a service, let us know. Send the Monitor an email at news@monitor.com, and we’ll help spread the word.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
