Recycleing questions.

Drove by the metal recycling place the other day and they had a sign out front that read, Alum 40, Tin 90, Cars 100.

Now I am assuming that means aluminum is 40 cents a pound. Tin, 90 cents a pound.(Wow! Is that right?) Cars? Is that $1.00 a pound or is that $100. per car?

After reading that I am starting to collect the tin cans we always throw away daily. At the end of the first day of cooking meals I had already collected probably a pounds worth of tin cans. If that's right then that means we previously have been throwing away a $1.00 a day in trash. Wow! That's money I could be using for something else. Pay for my internet service!

Well the question I have is can a person save their plastics, melt them down, pour into blocks and be able to sell them? If so, where?

[Siryet]

wow. All I ask is PLease DON"T melt any plastics. Poison Poison Poison

Good luck in the recycling. A good amount of money can be had by recycling
alum. I just don't know about tin cans.

[comfortablynumb]

noooo
aluminon is by the pound, tin and cars are by the 100lb.

or that miht be their min. weight acceptace for scrap.

at $1 a 100# for cars they are really screwing people over.
hereabouts a scap auto brings $8 a 100, 70 cnests for a pound of aluminum. $5 for a 100lb of mixed tin.

[Gideon]

We save our alum. cans/foil and it adds up fairly well. Many places take plastic of different kinds. Copper is nearly $3 per pound. People are stealing it from everywhere. All this metal is going to China and like the Japaneese buying up everything they could get their hands on prior to WWII this stuff may come back to us in bullets. I am sitting on any scrap as it will continue to climb in value for the forseeable future.

[Meg Z]

You might want to ask at the recycling center. And also ask about the cans. If it specified tin, then they aren't talking about the cans food comes in...those are steel, even though we always refer to cans as 'tin'. Find out exactly what is and isn't acceptable. Some places do recycle the steel cans, too.

Meg

[heather]

Shop around for the best prices -
Some companies list their prices in the paper -

40 c for aluminum is NOT a good price right now - it should be higher


PS - don't melt your plastics - recycle them - if they are not recyclable (here they only recycle #1 & #2) find another use for them on the homestead (I use some to start seeds in)

[baddogbad]

I am sitting on any scrap...

ouch!

that's gotta hurt...

I was wondering about the tin cans if they were really tin or not and Yes as soon as I get a chance I'm going to stop by the recycle shop and ask more questions so I can have a better understanding of their prices.

As far as the melting of the plastics go I figured if I do it outside in something like a double boiler type pan? Anyway, I have a brother-in-law who use to collect soft plastics such as grocery sacks, bread sacks, etc. and he would melt them down, add a color pigment, and then pour into plastic fishing worm molds. He made his and his fishing buddies their own plastic worms for fishing. I just thought if they had kits to do something like that why couldn't a person melt plastic down and then sell them to whoever?

Well thanks for your input, very much appreciated. RH. in Oklahoma

[clovis]

I just took a small load, and had so little that I was a little embarassed to take it in. I am still stunned that I got $56 for my load!!!! If I would have guessed before hand, I would have thought I had less than $15.

The important thing is to separate and clean your scrap before you take it in. Have all your #1 copper in one box, lead in another, insulated wire in another, and so forth. Therefore, they will pay you more for each metal. Otherwise, the place here will just pay about 50 cents a pound for 'mixed scrap', just to get you out the door.

They paid 2.40 for #1 copper and 1.00 for mixed unclean brass.

While I am just a neophyte at scrapping, my motto is "know it, clean it, separate it".

$56 is a great way to start any day. Wish I had 50 houses to scrap.
Clove

[comfortablynumb]

in general they say "tin" and mean tin sheet steel like;
washers dryers toasters stuff like that. its really thin steel, tin, zinc nickle and other aloys all mixed in together.... kinda.

if you have a chopped up car they dont consider the hood and doors and trunk and fenders "tin" its auto steel.... different price.

tin cans like soup cans fall under "mixed tin" or just "tin scrap" because alot of tin cans have a zinc lining and are not all steel.

if you can get steel car rims, seperate those for a seperate load, hereabouts "car rims" are worth 7.50 or 8 bucs a 100#
for some reason.... I dunno why. probably a higher grade steel.

prices are up so high now, seperation is a must do even for a few pounds... before it didnt make much difference.

as for sittin on your scrap thats not a joke, I know pwople who are hording copper and other scrap metals waiting for the price to go up.... like silver just did. silver nearly doubled in @ 6 weeks.

scrap is better, if you have scrounged a ton of copper, and the price goes way up youve made a better profit margin than if you had bought into silver.

[Wayne02]

Do they take cast iron like is used in weightlifting sets?

[GrannyG]

We save aluminun cans and got $80+ for our efforts, so we are earnestly collecting them now, they are all over the place anyway. They are paying 70 cents here for aluminum cans.