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Hauling Cans and Bottles
2011-08-15

By JIM DWYER / The New York Times

Hauling Cans and Bottles Through Brooklyn, for a Hard-Earned Extra Penny
Standing in the shade of the McDonald Avenue El in Brooklyn, John Culpepper was a good 45-minute walk from home, but he nodded at a sign dangling from a driveway across the street:
Thrifty Redemption Center
Recycle Cans Here for 6¢


Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
Aluminum cans at the Thrifty Redemption Center in Brooklyn, which accepts them from scavengers for six cents each.

“That’s why I come here,” Mr. Culpepper said. “Normally, it’s 5 cents a can.”

All that way for an extra penny?

“Think about it,” he said. “Seven bags, 100 cans in a bag, that’s $42. Somewhere else, a supermarket, where you get a nickel, it’s like” — he paused for a moment to do the currency conversion.

“It’s 10 bags,” he said, then corrected himself. “No. It’s, like, nine bags or so in the places that give you a nickel. Nine bags to get to $42. Instead of seven to get $42 when you come here.”

The power of that penny shapes the day along McDonald and 18th Avenues. In ancient times, the Silk Road was worn into history by a parade of traders crisscrossing the known world. In our time, McDonald Avenue has become an aluminum alley.


Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
Luis, an Ecuadorean immigrant, towing his cart to the Thrifty Redemption Center on Tuesday.

By 7 most mornings, a line has started to form at Thrifty Redemption Center. At first, it is hard to pick out any human form as each nimbus of cans and bottles floats along the sidewalk, driven by hidden pistons of legs.

The grocery carts are packed with cases of empty glass bottles, and these are topped by stacks of bags of plastic bottles, like a bubble bath that rises over the edge of the tub but somehow does not spill onto the floor. The aluminum cans swing in bags from out-riggings on the sides of the cart, broomsticks or drapery rods salvaged from the street.

Among the first to arrive most mornings is a young Chinese woman, her hand curled into a hitch on the front bar of the cart as she steers it toward a curb cut. Luis, an older Ecuadorean immigrant, waves to her. In a few minutes, Frank arrives in a Toyota Corolla that is the automotive equivalent of the shopping carts: he drives with the trunk open so the bags of bottles can froth out.

Retired from the phone company, Frank works a few nights in a restaurant and brings the empties home to his garage in Bay Ridge. Once a week, he drives them to Thrifty Redemption. No full name and no pictures, he said, with an eye on the tax man. “This will be $50 to me,” he said. “Fishing money. I go out of Sheepshead Bay, half-day.”

The extra penny is not the lure of Thrifty Redemption for Frank. He goes there because he can unload all his empties at one place. Unlike many supermarkets, Thrifty does not limit how many it will redeem in a day. “I don’t take the extra penny. He’s got to eat, too,” Frank said. “I like that you can bring as many as you want.”

Vincent Cristallo, who runs Thrifty but is not the owner, says the business counts on getting as many bottles and cans as it can. “They don’t need to go into a supermarket and have people yelling at them,” Mr. Cristallo said. “We treat them like human beings.”

Under New York’s bottle law, a business like Thrifty returns the empties to each brand’s distributor, getting the original nickel deposit and at least 3.5 cents more. That makes each bottle and can worth 8.5 cents to Thrifty — but everything has to be sorted so that, for instance, empty Cokes don’t go to the Pepsi distributor.

“You’re basically sorting it for them,” Mr. Culpepper said. “If you want to shoot for 6 cents, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Laid off two years ago from food preparation at La Guardia Airport, Mr. Culpepper, 35, said he had turned scavenging into a full-time job paying $400 most weeks, more on holidays. That goes toward the $1,159 rent on the one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Parkway where he lives with his wife and their 2-year-old son. He also does part-time work as a porter in his building, mostly for the stash space.

Mr. Culpepper says he goes out with his cart around 8 on the night before scheduled pickups, loading the cans and bottles left out for the morning. He wears a bottom layer of latex gloves beneath a pair of cotton gloves. By being tidy, he keeps peace with building supers; he slips a few dollars to one who gives him a hand.

“In your own neighborhood, people look at you and say you can do better,” he said. “I figure, it’s $10 an hour, fast-food wages. My relatives don’t know. Everyone on this planet has pride.

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