How do I find a close by option to recycle soda cans?

August 1, 2019 9:33 AM

How do I find the nearest one of these can recycling machines to my apartment? I live in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, NYC. (Or how do I find the nearest option to recycle cans? Doesn’t have to be a machine.)
posted by andoatnp to Food & Drink (5 answers total)

New York's Returnable Container Act states that retailers have to take back cans for any product they sell. Assuming they're all pretty basic popular brands, that's going to be the nearest market, most likely. A quick Google turns up a T D Bottle Can Redemption on Walworth St that will likely also recycle them for you, if that's closer.
posted by neilbert at 9:52 AM on August 1, 2019

Hmm. Are you looking for regular can recycling, or the kind where you get the refund for returning the can? Because you can recycle soda cans in your regular plastic/metal/glass recycling that gets picked up by the city.
posted by CiaoMela at 10:05 AM on August 1, 2019

I've been bagging mine separately on recycling day so local can harvesters can just pick up the whole bag and go; the amount of money it would save me to machine recycle them myself is nonexistent in terms of time spent doing so while the amount of time (and noisy rummaging in quiet hours) it saves them is, idk, maybe significant? It feels like I'm doing something useful and sometimes that's all we can hope for.

In terms of answering your actual question, I would personally just ask a neighborhood can harvester. Also some of the more discount chain supermarkets (c-town, etc) have can machines outside; if not, people working there will often know. Be aware that area can harvesters with hundreds of cans may be using the machine(s) at the times you find most convenient and there may be queue etiquette you are unaware of when the machines are crowded.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:44 AM on August 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

You can take them to a grocery store or even cvs/duane reade and they will count the cans and give you the redemption value. I've seen people do this. As a courtesy you can ask if there is a preferred time for you to bring them in. Often the manager does it instead of the cashier.
posted by perdhapley at 11:02 AM on August 1, 2019

FWIW, my neighborhood can harvesters mostly take their cans to bigger depots, they don't bother using the machines - what's more convenient when you have a grocery bag of cans is different from what's convenient when you have a bunch of trash bags full of cans.
posted by mskyle at 2:44 PM on August 1, 2019