Cash Back Recycling – Brilliant!

On trash pickup days, we put our recyclable materials in curbside bins: glass bottles, plastic bottles, tin and aluminum cans. The city hauls them all away for recycling.
“Do we get the CRV?” my daughter asked.
“No, we just let the truck take it all away for free,” I said. “And we feel good for recycling.”
My daughter was aghast, We were giving away cash! Ever the industrious teen. She kept the recyclable containers aside until we had a month’s worth of bottles and cans. It was a huge pile of loot, with plenty of those big dime-value containers.
We drove to our local recycling center, and were promptly told to sort our cans and bottles into bins. No problem! We had already separated the glass and plastic. How hard could it be?
“Clear glass here, colored glass there, aluminum here, plastic there, tin here,” the guy running the place said. A gruff-looking man rode up on a bicycle with huge plastic bags full of recyclables that we guessed he collected off the street. He didn’t need a tutorial, he went straight to work at sorting his find. Hey, if he can do it, so can we.
“Just make sure it says CA CRV on the label,” the recycling station manager said to us.
“Don’t they all say CA CRV?” we asked.
The recycling station manager cracked a smile. “Nope.”
For the record – California pays cash back for containers that held water, soda, beer, wine coolers, mineral water, sport drinks, coffee, tea and juice. (The redemption value is added on to the price of the beverage when you buy it.)
Those milk cartons we brought? Bzzzt.
Those plastic yogurt containers? Bzzzt.
Those tin cans that had healthy vegetables? Bzzzt.
For the stuff we returned that had redemption value, our cash back totaled a whopping 70 cents. That’s not even enough to buy a taco!
“So much for getting rich off our own recycling,” my daughter said.
My daughter gives up too easily. Clearly, we’re eating the wrong things.
“No more milk in your cereal,” I said. “Soda pays cash back.”
Caching!