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[OT] - save "tin" cans to add to scrap metal?

matt_isserstedt

Diamond
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
Location
suburbs of Ann Arbor, MI, USA
I have always turned the few I have in for curbside recycling....

HOWEVER

With the uptick in metal prices, scrap yards are all over the radio ads!!

So I decided to save whatever metals I could, have a growing pile of stuff that formerly would have hit the trash, its small, I might have 10lbs saved :rolleyes5: My thoughts are better me to get the "return rate" than the recycle boys.

BUT

I wondered if there is any downside to saving "tin" cans from food, other than the step of washing them first so the shop don't smell :ack2:
 
here the law is once someone puts their recyclables to the curb, the county owns them [or what ever the autority is]. Last year, the mayor of Manlius, a very afluent town, got arrested for taking nickle returnable cans from road side pick up containers. He claimed that he was collecting returnables to by special food for his dog, it turns out that he did not have a dog and that he was also charged with taking sausage from the fireman. go figure.
 
Zag, that may be the "back end" story, but the village hall is in the same building as the firehouse, If I recall the story, when the fireman would go out on a call, the mayor would go into their kitchen and take food. I guess they got tired of coming back from fighting a fire and finding their lunch gone.
 
Weight is weight!....and if you've the room to store them with your other scrap, then why not.

Yes I know you need a lot of cans to a pound, but it could be a single can that takes the scale over in to the next division;)
 
No one has mentioned cans or any thin steel scrap oxidizes before it does much melting - just adds to the slag. Did this problem ever get addressed to make fooling with thin steel scrap profitable?
 
I absolutely do this.I scrap and recycle any how so might as well get paid back for the cans I paid for with the product they contained.I'm a frugal SOB and often eat my lunch out of a can.When done I rinse the can out with my spoon and toss the can in a bucket next to my other scrap.On Saturday mornings when the bucket is full I'll take five minutes and crush them 6 at a time in my press and toss them in with the rest of the steel.
 
Hello Matt_isserstedt
I've been throwing them into the barrel for years. I don't bother washing them out as others do. It costs more for the water than what the can is worth. Yes they do take up a lot of room. I've been contemplating on building some sort of unit for the press out of a piece of heavy tube structural steel & a matching plate on the end of the ram to compress them into a cube.
 
No one has mentioned cans or any thin steel scrap oxidizes before it does much melting - just adds to the slag. Did this problem ever get addressed to make fooling with thin steel scrap profitable?

Not shure how they do it but know that tyler pipe and nucor now pay a premium for shred

All the scrapyards are putting in tin shreaders
 
All the can manufacturers recycle their steel scrap and tin cans are considered to be highly recyclable containers so the steel mills deal with the light weight material in their furnace.

Bernard
 
I save Alum cans and tin cans, I put them in a 5 gal bucket (lables removed, washed) and when the bucket is full I set them out on the floor and tamp them flat with the bottom of an 8 lb sledge hammer. Alum I stand up, tin I lay down.
I was laying out Alum cans once to tamp, Mailman walked up and ask "Are you going bowling?"
I sold 14,260 lbs of steel last week, including the tin cans.
 
I don't find it to be worthwhile, and I can't drive by anything heavy on the side of the road without picking it up. Not when the average pickup that I find worthwhile pays for a 1/4 tank of gas.

It just doesn't add up for me, and space is already at a premium.
 








 
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