4 Items in Your Home that Can Make You Money by Recycling
Homes are treasure troves for people who can see the wealth located at their fingertips. Most people don’t realize that they can make extra money just by reassessing how they handle items that are normally recycling for free, give away to charities, take to junk yards or toss in the trash.
In a modern throwaway culture, consumers often have a dispose-and-replace mentality that makes it difficult for them to see how simple, everyday recyclable items can make them money.
Instead of seeing recycling for cash as a waste of time, consider how you can make money with the following four types of recyclables:
Food Containers
Some states have approved deposit programs designed to pay consumers to reduce litter and unnecessary landfill waste.
A consumer who drops off bottles, jars and other lid-style food containers manufactured with glass or specific plastics and metals at a recycling center receives a refund of five cents or more per item.
Unlike non-deposit container recycling, you don’t typically have to recycle the container lids separately or remove paper labels or retail stickers.
You usually only need to make certain that you rinse out the containers thoroughly before turning them in.
Scrap Metals
People often forget that they can make a lot of money by recycling scrap metals like aluminum, brass and copper.
For example, you might sell aluminum soda and beer cans, baking sheets or old gutters, siding, window frames, storm door frames and patio furniture.
With brass, you might sell lighting and plumbing fixtures, keys, locks, door knobs, handles and hinges and parts from sprinklers.
When trying to find copper, look for insulated wires and copper coils in appliances and personal electronics.
You can also find copper wires in power cords, electrical wires and TV, phone and internet cables.
Other sources of copper around the home include old pipes, cookware and indoor and outdoor décor.
Electrical Devices
You might first think of personal electronics, such as music players, radios, computers, printers and accessories, whenever someone mentions recycling electrical devices.
You can usually recycle these items in exchange for cash or credit at electronics and office supply stores.
That said, you can also sell electrical equipment used for building and regional grid electric power distribution that you might have collected from old home repair or renovation projects.
It doesn’t matter if the equipment is broken or outdated since most electrical equipment buyers want any equipment they can get their hands on to resell working parts like bus plugs, circuit breakers, fuses, switches, motor controls and transformers.
Vehicle Batteries
If you have an old vehicle battery collecting dust in a garage or shed, you can typically make a few bucks in cash or store credit by taking it to an auto parts store, a retailer that exclusively sells vehicle batteries or a general or scrap metal recycling center that takes lead acid batteries.
Since batteries are harmful to the environment when thrown into landfills, these stores and facilities try to entice people to recycle batteries with incentives.
Additionally, some auto parts stores won’t return your core charge deposit when you buy a new battery unless you turn in an old one, which means a vehicle battery that stops working can save you money when buying a new one.
It’s important to remember that you can also typically make cash from these recyclables by selling them via offline and online classified advertisements and yard sales.
For example, you might attempt to sell glass jars to people who want cheap glass containers that they can upcycle for craft projects and special events.
Some metalworkers and sculptors pay more money than scrap recyclers for certain metals.
The fact is that you can usually find someone willing to buy what you might normally dispose of for free if you’re patient.
Instead of throwing away money, try one or more of these methods today.
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Category: Family Finances
