If your community has bottle and can return machines, you probably do this on a regular basis already. For those of us who don’t have access to all the usual American conveniences (like myself and my fellow New Yorkers), it’s a real pain to return bottles and cans. Other than ‘can gatherers’ who return hundreds of cans and bottles at a time to make money, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone returning cans and bottles.

Well, that’s changed now. Our household decided to quit throwing away money. We now return our bottles and cans. We may only get a $1.00 or so back, but money shouldn’t be thrown away. 

At first it seemed somehow humiliating – like I was scrounging for money. Now I wonder why everyone doesn’t do it. Why isn’t everyone recycling and ‘getting paid’ to do it. And it’s a great lesson for our daughter (who usually gets to keep the deposit money) – that a little effort pays off.

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