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Pop Cans Pay
by Katie Bryden
Aluminum is dear
Vending machines could offer cans
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When you walk by a trash barrel that is full of soda cans, consider that you might be passing a profitable opportunity.
If you recycled the cans from one case of soda every week for one year you would make about $36.40. If Mars Hill College organized a campus-wide recycling program for aluminum, the cans you have seen thrown away over all the weekends spent in Mars Hill could be turned into a contribution to the Activities Fund or some other campus project.
Sonia Gribble, owner of Mountain Metals Recycling, has proposed to make it easier for the college to get a cash return on recycled metals. The company, located at 79 Pond Road in Asheville, usually charges a fee for its bins to be dropped off, but Gribble has offered to provide the service and waive the fees. For every pound of aluminum collected and delivered, Mountain Metals Recycling will refund money to the college based on the commodity market at that time for various metals. The metals market fluctuates hourly, much like the oil market.
The refund value of cans now averages about seventy cents a pound, and it takes 30 to 32 soda cans to make a pound.
"I think all vending machines should have cans instead of plastic bottles. Aluminum is easy to collect and has a greater value for resale and could possibly be a revenue stream for us," says Mark Norwood, Mars Hill College's Grounds Supervisor.
Gribble claims that in the last two years, aluminum has reached record high levels because of the amount being exported to China. There are twelve types of aluminum, but Mountain Metals Recycling has the facilities and the knowledge to sort it out as well as separate aluminum cans from regular steel cans.
"We all carry magnets with us at work," says Gribble. This is the easiest way to figure out if something is aluminum or not. She said that generally soup cans and such are actually steel, which she also collects and recycles, but she doesn't offer a refund.
Much of Pittman Dining Hall's stock is received in steel cans -- everything from ketchup to canned peaches and pizza sauce. That is a huge volume of refundable material that is currently going into the land fill. One downside to putting it into a recycling program is that the cans must be rinsed and crushed - a job that would have to be done by student volunteers. But Gribble says her company will pick it up without charge.
Mars Hill College is currently paying $47 per ton to have its bulk waste hauled away, according to Norwood. "It seems that this college disposes of an average of thirteen tons of waste per month. Each dumpster haul costs $72 and we average around five per month," Norwood said. "The economics of waste and recycling will always stop with the almighty dollar. Reducing the waste volume is the best attack on waste at this school," Norwood says.
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