Recycling For Profit

OK, everyone knows that they can take back their drink containers for cash. What most people don't know is that you can do it in large quantities and make good money recycling. A typical North American family consumes 182 gallons of soda, 29 gallons of juice, 104 gallons of milk and 26 gallons of bottled water a year. There are recycling centers that pay by weight.

For example, you can crush your soda cans with a can crusher so they aren't so bulky. You can fit a lot more in the bag that way. Check at your local recycling centers how much they pay per pound. This is a great way for charity groups to ramp up their campaigns by recycling for profit.

Many people can't be bothered with a few cans, but if you offer to take them away, they are more than happy to give them to you. There are still many offices that are not recycling. Why not offer to place a box for them to put their cans and bottles? Years ago, my son did this when he was saving to go on an overseas school trip, and earned all of his spending money from cans and bottles.

Scrap Metal is also usually paid by weight, so depending on the type of metal, you can defitnitely make money recycling scrap metal. Copper, for example, tends to be very high in demand. Where do you get scrap copper? Old wiring is a good source. There are many industrial sites just begging for recyclers to come and pick up metals that they need to dispose of.

A word of caution here - please respect other people's property. My home town had a huge problem with construction sites being broken into and their wiring and any other metals stolen. The whole purpose of recycling is to reuse and re-purpose things that have already been used, not new things just for the sake of recycling for profit.

Electronics is another way to find metal. You usually have to take things apart to get to the metal, because if you return the item as is there is usually no refund. Car repair shops can have an abundance of metal. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Cell phone recycling is in it's infancy, which presents a huge opportunity. This year in the US approximately 130 million cell phones are expected to be replaced. Did I say HUGE opportunity? And that's not including the 500 million or so cell phones hiding in closets or drawers. Currently, only about 5% of cell phones are being recycled.

On average, cell phone users are replacing or upgrading about every 18 months. This is due to the portability of phone numbers. Now that people can take their phone number with them, they no longer wait for the average 3 year contract to expire. As soon as the newer, shinier, model-with-more-features comes out, users have been ditching their old cell phones at alarming rates.

Cell phones contain many different toxic substances, so it is very important that they do not end up in landfills. One of the worst offenders of these is lead. Producers of cell phones are working on replacing lead in the manufacturing process, as excessive exposure to lead is very dangerous.

So how can you make money from recycling cell phones? If each one of those retired cell phones was worth on average about $10, then there is potentially $110 million dollars out there! The older a cell phone gets, the less it is worth. Some of the newer models still have a pretty high value. Check out how much your old cell phone is worth Here.

Another way to make money recycling is battery reconditioning. This can be very lucrative because often times you can get dead batteries for free, recondition them and resell them at a very nice profit. The costs to do this are very minimal. It is fairly easy to do, but can be messy and dangerous if you don't know how to do it properly.

Battery recycling is a recession proof business because people need batteries to keep their everyday lives and businesses running, regardless of the type of economy. Because of the portable society we have become, we cannot live without batteries and consider them a necessity, rather than a luxury. It is commonly known that in a recession, people tend to give up luxury items to save money, so they are not likely to give up such necessary tools, such as batteries.

Did you know that you can start a battery reconditioning business for less that a $200 investment? I don't know of very many high profit margin businesses that can get going on such a low investment. The tools required are easy to acquire and can even be purchased used to save even more money.

The Battery Reconditioning Guide gives you step by step instructions on starting a recycling for profit business.