Just curious. Sometimes I see homeless people with huge caches of cans they are assembling for sale to a scrap metal dealer, and I wonder how much each can is worth. If you collect (say) 1000 aluminum cans how much is each can going to be worth in terms of what the scrap metal dealer will give you at current prices?.
I’m finding around $0.70/lb. I dunno what that works out to per can.
A pound of aluminum makes 28-30 cans, so… around $.024
I don’t think so.
70c per pound; 28 cans per pound.
So, 28 cans gets you 70c, or 2.5c per can, which is pretty much what Nametag said.
It varies by location. I’m in charge of the recycling where I work and we have a truckload of aluminum every couple of weeks. The prices vary according to what type of aluminum it is, but we usually have a half dozen different types and they have ranged from 20 to 45 cents per pound the past year. We haven’t taken a load in a couple of weeks and I’ve heard prices have gone up a little lately though.
If I were homeless, I would skip the cans and steal a few car wheels or something else heavy instead. A year or two ago, China was going through a lot of aluminum and the prices were over a dollar per pound. Copper was even higher and people were breaking into things like air conditioning units outside buildings just to steal the copper.
Just wanted to add that according to this site, loose beverage cans like a homeless guy might bring in are averaging closer to 20 cents per pound.
In my area, pop cans are going for $0.30 - $0.33/pound
(Not homeless, but collects cans)
Hmm, so you don’t have a recycling system where you get paid for bringing cans to a collection station? Here you get about 7c for an aluminium can, and 14c or 28c for the plastic bottles depending on size.
For the people set on the higher prices, there was a severe drop in scrap prices almost a year ago. The first site I found was paying 22 cents a pound.
The only places you get a high return per can is one of the few states that charge a deposit on each can. It’s unnecessary as most aluminum cans will be taken out of the trash cans anyplace there is a trash. there are that many scroungers.
Ah, thanks. Here we have a national system where we pay a deposit for cans. Every grocery store has an automatic return station where you can reclaim the deposit. It’s so common here that I hadn’t considered that other countries do it differently.
Some states in the US use a similar method, but most don’t.
We used to have deposits on bottles but that stopped in the 1960s.
The US states with a can deposit law are:
New York
Connecticut
California
Delaware
Hawaii
Iowa
Maine
Massachussetts
Oregon
Vermont
Michigan
In every state other than Michigan, the deposit is 5 cents. In Michigan it is 10 cents (and the state of origin is not checked when you return the cans - in fact this is the basis of an episode of “Seinfeld”).
Not in my state.
And the Oregon Bottle Bill was the first in the nation (US), so I’ll thank you to just move Oregon to the top of this list. 
And it’s 5 cents a can and really no trouble and has been working quite well for a long time.
So how many people in places with deposits on drink containers take them back for deposit? I live in California and do not. I just put them in my curbside recycling bin. I am not going to pack up my bottles and cans to wait while they are counted out so I can get a buck or two. There is drying paint that needs to be monitored. I would be really interested to know what percentage of the deposits are redeemed.
Well my wife redeems the cans we drink and puts the money into a little fund and uses the money on a trip once a year with her friends. It adds up. You are paying for the deposit one way or another, if you wish to throw away $100-$200 per year why not just throw them out the window and let the bums profit from your largesse?
It is only meant as an incentive not to throw them away. If you wish to throw them away go right ahead.
When I lived in CA, in an apartment with no curbside recycling, we took them to the recycling center for our 2.5 cents/can or bottle. We didn’t want to just throw them out. When we bought a house, with curbside recycling, we used that like you do. ghardester, from what I recall, people did go around ahead of the garbage/recycling trucks, taking out the cans.
Here in MI, 10 cents/can adds up a lot faster, so I redeem them.