Recycling soda cans Bullfeathers

Back in the 1960s me and a couple of friends we riding in a car a couple of miles outside of town. We passed two people walking along the road picking up soda bottles. My friend sitting by the passenger door threw his soda bottle out the window for the two to pick up. We were immediately pulled over by the CHP and he was given a ticket for littering. No good deed goes unpunished.

In the 60s soda bottles got you four cents. This was from the bottler, with no government help. Today you get five cents through a government  process.

A couple of days ago I was taking my afternoon walk around the park and there was a aluminum soda can laying on the grass. There were other people in the park. It’s busy place. The can was for 16 ounces of green tea and it looked like it had been there since the night before.

People use to fight over a beer can laying on the ground. People use to stop their car, get out, and pick up soda cans laying by the road.

What happened? Inflation. In the 60s a nickel was still made from nickel. Now, the metal, nickel cost to much to make money out of. Or is it money isn’t worth enough to make it out of something valuable.

I’m still waiting for the five dollar plastic piece that Robert A. Heinlein talked about in his science fiction books that he wrote in the 950s.

If the State of California is going to do something about litter and get people to recycle then it has to admit that there has been inflation since the price of soda, water and beer can-and-bottles was set back in the 1970s. On top of that an article in Scientific American detailed how aluminum soda and beer cans are now made with less aluminum than just a few years ago. Have the recycle dealers changed the amount they pay per pound? Or are people who take their cans in get less than the price per can because the cans weight less.

Recycle, the public says Bullfeathers. Make it worth it.

Write on, draw on.    Professor Hyram Voltage