Getting Green for Going Green: How to Get Cash for Trash

Last summer, I had the water lines for our washing machine redone. The old lines were corroded and yucky looking. Guess what? Even as ugly as those pieces of scrap looked, the next time I went with my son to take aluminum cans to the local recycling center, I loaded up all the pieces of scrap in a sack. Just a few old pieces of copper scrap brought $8-10 in addition to the few dollars we made on aluminum cans.

Feeling ambitious, a week or so later, I took a lot of old, unsightly pieces of scrap metal, mostly iron and steel, to Davis Iron and Metal at 2610 Wheeler Ave. in Fort Smith, AR, where I live. My wife had complained about an old wheelbarrow and a few items I had leaned against our storage building. I had an old metal folding chair that some lard posterior had broken, so I just loaded up the F-150 and headed to Davis, 3-4 miles from the house.

They have a large set of scales they have you drive onto, after filling out some info, they record the weight of the entire vehicle (and no, I didn't try to stay in the truck the first time around, then make sure I was not in the 2nd time). After pulling around to the back of the scrap yard and unloading, you just pull back onto the $15-20 they subtract the difference in weight and pay you the going rate for whatever type of metal you had. Mine was mostly steel. The $15-20 I received was well worth the trip. I made a few extra dollars, helped the environment and pleased my wife all at once. Now, that's what I call "going green".

You see, with all the development and industrialization in China and India in particular, the price of precious metal has skyrocketed. Steel, copper, aluminum, iron and brass are in demand, and companies sometimes have trouble getting them, so if you have any junk taking up space in your backyard or building, load it up and take it to a recycling center. The benefits are well worth what little time it takes to "go green" . I know many people scoof at that. "There is no global warming" they say, or "it's just cyclical", so eat, drink and be merry and trash everything and we'll all live happily everafter.

Folks, there are limits to the Earth's natural resources, but even if all our resources were unlimited, why not make a few extra dollars instead of throwing these things in the trash? There are a lot of jobs in the recycling industry, as well. Anything that is recycled is not taking up space in a landfill, also. Think about it, as the population continues to increase, that creates more and more trash, which in turn creates more need for landfills. Everybody wants their trash picked up, but nobody wants a landfill next door, so the more we recycle, the less a need there is for more landfills.

"Going green" is sneered at by many, but with the loss of more and more manufacturing jobs, where are the new jobs going to come from? Some of the new jobs will be in the fields of recycling and renewable energy. Going green is not just something for old hippies or Harvard grads, it can benefit all of us.

If you have newspaper or magazine subscriptions, these materials can be recycled for money, also. In Fort Smith, the Fort Smith Waste Paper Company, located at 301 N. 2nd Street, buys old newspapers, cardboard, computer paper, and office records. You don't get a lot, 2 or 3 cents a pound, but it's not a lot more trouble than throwing these items in the trash, for which you receive nothing. What I do is wait until I have 200-300 pounds stored in the garage, then load it up all at once every 2-3 months. They take glass, steel cans and plastic jugs, but you don't get paid for those items here. Maybe you do in your area, though. I load that stuff up at the same time, since it goes to the same location, saving a trip.

If the tap water is good in your area, you might think about drinking out of the tap rather than buying plastic water bottles. In an earlier article, I wrote about the benefits of doing so. In additon to helping "go green", you could save hundreds of dollars a year by passing up bottled water for tap water.

When it comes to plastic water bottles, not only is plastic an oil byproduct, meaning that it takes a lot of oil to produce the millions of bottles, but the double whammy is that millions of these bottles wind up in landfills, causing the landfills to fill up earlier creating a need for more landfills. In certain situations, I can see carrying bottles of water, traveling to a foreign for instance. But when good tap water is readily available, consider drinking out of the tap instead.

A person doesn't have to go to extremes like an Ed Begley, Jr., necessarily to "go green". None of us can change the effects of climate change by ourselves, but acting in large numbers, we can make a difference and make a little extra money at the same time. Recycling doesn't mean you must wear sandals, a ponytail and a peace sign medallion around your neck. Recycling just makes good sense. When it comes to metals, many are worth money, so why not check your local recycling center instead of throwing those metal scraps in the trash or letting them rust in the backyard?