auto-reply: out of office

Hey all,

I went to Santa Ynez for the weekend. The folks over at Island View Catering put on a delicious pre-Thanksgiving party at the owners' ranch house. These guys know their food. If you're in Santa Barbara County, I strongly recommend! (Full disclosure: I received no compensation, monetary or otherwise, for my review and/or endorsement)

While I was at the ranch I collected a bunch of cans, but the goat ate them all:


This week I'm traveling to the proud state of New Jersey, another state sans bottle bill. I suppose that I could save them up and bring them back to California, but that might get me in trouble. I guess I'll just have to wait until I'm in California.

Have a good thanksgiving! Try to recycle what you can, no matter where you're at!

-Charles

P.S.: No, goats don't really eat cans.

Bunny Boy

Hey all,

So tonight I went out for a bit after finishing some of my Microeconomics problem set [if any of you ever did Bergstrom/Varian workouts as an undergrad, you'll be excited to know that Bergstrom is in fact my professor!].


So I cruised down DP, and actually stumbled across a Keystone Graveyard in between the beginning of DP and the end of Campus. Since cans are so easily collected here, it's a totally accepted behavior to just throw your empties onto your lawn. By the way, tomorrow is Veteran's Day, so there was a fair amount of celebration considering it was a Tuesday night. The cans smelled so grody that I actually left them outside for the night (see photo on the right). Just one of the reasons I try to steer towards plastic when I can.

Although my Alma Mater didn't celebrate Veteran's Day, I guess they take it seriously here. I don't have classes tomorrow, so I'll probably cash them in then.

Further on down on DP, the cans didn't come so easy. However, the night wasn't a total loss: I stumbled upon a film being shot right on the Del Playa shores. I wasn't able to go on set, but special thanks to Morgan for snapping some nice shots for me:



















The film, "Bunny Boy", is currently in production and will be showing at the IV Theatre sometime in the Spring of 2010. Keep an eye out for it!

Good night, and thanks for reading!

-Charles

Midterms are over!

Hey all,

I just got back from collecting. In two hours I'm guessing I snagged about a buck's worth of aluminum and maybe $3 or $4 in plastic. I finished my last midterm this afternoon, so I figured I could take the night to hang out and get plastic. After an afternoon spent drinking on Goleta Beach, I set out.

While I pretty much stuck to the same spots there were several interesting things worth mentioning about my collecting tonight:

1. As I was biking through campus on my way to IV, I noticed a group of kids with what looked like swords and fencing gear:










Turns out they're a medieval fight re-enactment club, the Shire of the Isles. Unfortunately the show didn't last long, as practice was just ending as I got there :( With they're attention to form and strategy I can at least say that these guys were way more professional than some kids just running around playing make-belief.

2. I saw a raccoon that was the size of a small dog. I snapped pics, and even pursued on foot, but it seems raccoons are extremely un-photogenic. Oh well.

3. It appears that I got a low-level burn from handling bleach. It seems that one of the recycling bins had some discarded bottles of detergent in it. You can see a little white spot on my hand, in between my thumb and first finger. I took this right before I jumped in the shower to clean off:


I suppose it's just another on-the-job hazard and other than a bit of swelling I'm none worse for the wear.

On another note, last weekend was Halloween at UCSB. About 25,000 people ended up coming
from all over Cali to enjoy the Bacchanalia. I think I saw about a dozen Links, the cast of Mario-Kart, and enough sexy co-eds/librarians/schoolgirls to start a new UC campus. There was TV coverage, mounted police, and even these guys:

Although it might appear that this is just a dedicated team costume, they were actually paramedics on patrol in the case that someone fell off the cliffs over the ocean, or passed out in one of the unlit parks on Del Playa. Fortunately there were no deaths this year, and only a few hundred arrests. Can't wait until next year!

Alright that's all for now! Thanks for reading!

-Charles

Judge not lest ye be judged

Hey all,

So I set another personal record today. I recycled my cans and took in just over $13. Even with crushing each can down, my poor bicycle may have reached its saturation point:

I would be worried about wear and tear, but bicycles tend to have a pretty short life at UCSB. Between drunken crashes, salty air, and (most importantly) committed thieves, an average bicycle has a half-life of about 1.3 years. My bike, purchased in good (not new) condition, has already lost the use of the front brakes and most of the rear brakes. If you hear someone dragging his flip-flops around North Hall, there's a good chance you've stumbled upon a vertitable internet non-celebrity.

But back to the bottles!

I tried to snap some photos of the place but I ended up playing kick-the-can with a 5-year old boy who was turning in cans with his dad while I waited for my #1's and #2's (type of plastic) to be weighed.

$13 in a week is a new record for C3. I really had to pull out all the stops to make it work. Among some of the less savory tactics employed this time around were:

and

I understand that the above photos represent what economists refer to as rent-seeking (the practice of earning money by taking it from someone else). I'd like to think that anything thrown away is fair game.

On the bright side, I also got my first ever donation via a random Gatorade bottle left in my basket (Cheers!) and some sympathetic bros on the soccer fields ("saving 'em up for beer, huh bro?"). One thing I've realized is that if you live in a bottle-bill state and you don't want to save a can for yourself, you can literally throw it anywhere you'd like, guilt free: someone will find it, and happily take care of it for you.

Thanks for reading!
Charles

Let's Make A Deal

Hey guys,

So I turned in a haul over the weekend, and I decided to do a closer inspection of my recyclables.

Some of you might be curious how fair the payouts by weight are. If you've been wondering how they convert per-piece prices ($0.05 cents a container, $0.10 if large) to per-pound prices, you're not alone. Let me clarify:

The photo below shows three different container, all of which were taxed at the same (5 cent) CRV rate:


However, it's clear that they are not all the same weight. The bottle on the left is an examples of the new "Eco-Shape". These bottles use less plastic- good for the environment, but bad if you're getting paid by the pound. The bottle in the middle weighed roughly twice as much (by just feeling it unscientifically). The miniature bottle on the right was somewhere in between.

I get paid $0.96 cents per pound, which assumes that there are roughly 19 bottles per pound. I'm guessing that the price is sent down from the State, because they are the "banker" in this scenario. The recycling center is really just a sort of middle-man in moving the recyclables back towards reuse.

So, when I dropped of my bottles this time I decided to do an exhaustive count first to compare with my payout. I counted 116 bottles (counting twice for large bottles), which would come out to $5.80. When weighed, I got $5.28. This means that I got underpaid by 52 cents, or roughly 9%.

I suppose that this is within a reasonable margin of error, and if I worked on getting huge containers, I could easily be overpaid. Either way, it's something to think about.

-Charles

Jackpot

Hey guys,

In the words of Jim Anchower, I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya, but things have been in flux. Two weeks ago I left UCSB to go to Baltimore to visit my girlfriend. I ended up staying longer than expected to give a talk about research and grad school. Then, I somehow ended up flying back to Chicago Sunday to drive out to LA with my friend (who's moving to Hollywood). A couple of highlights:

-On tuesday we went through Colorado, where 26 degrees (Farenhieght), snow and sleet made driving quite hazardous. The very next day is was 108 (midmorning) in Death Valley.

-Vegas is amazing. The mix of money and sadness is like a flurescent Earnest Hemmingway. Somehow, I actually broke even after a night of penny slots and $3 blackjack.

Anyway, I had left some bottles which I wasn't able to cash in, so I went today to a new spot- the recycling center in IV. It was busy but I was able to get in before closing and cash my $5.45 cents at the IV Market. I met a guy named George. He's been living in IV (Anisqovo Park) for 5 months, doing construction and collecting because he's "got habits", as he put it. I didn't get a photo because things were kind of hectic, unfortunately.

On the way back, I decided to cruise by Rob Field (apparently the name of the aforementioned "practice fields". I did my walk around the recyle bins and -BOOM!- I filled both IKEA bags in 20 minutes:


I guess now that kids are here and lots of sports are practicing, it's a good time to be a can collector. Tonight is the first Friday since school's started. I'll try to snap some pix, but I'm not sure I can hold any more bottles right now. In the words of my friend Emil (a UCSB alum), "when it rains, it pours."

Ok guys thanks for reading! Drop a comment if you're curious about anything!

-Charles

Gimme The Loot!

Hey all,

So today's post goes out to all the little spots I've been hitting up for my cans. For those of you not familiar with UCSB, I hope this gives you a feel for the area. For alumni and students of UCSB, I hope you enjoy the post and maybe learn a little more some of the places you once rode past.

And a much deserved shout-out to Christopher Wallace for today's title.

Del Playa: The undergrads' mecca. Weekends can easily stretch out into 4 or 5 days in a typical week. On Holloween, some 80,000 in 2 square miles give IV a density roughly on par with Manilla or Bogor.


Pros: Not uncommon for massive house parties to overflow into massive street parties (like the photo above from last Friday night). Empties litter the streets (although the big money is to be had by actually going into a party and getting it from the source).
Cons: Lots of Gauchos all over. Sometimes it's too crowded to be on a bicycle safely.

Practice Fields: Where athletes and club teams practice soccer


Pros: Easiest; just walk the perimeter and check recycling bins. On the way to class. Near my home. No one else seems to be collecting from here.
Cons: Locked up early in the morning and late at night. Also, I'm not sure when the facilities people come and empty the bins.



On Campus: So close, yet so far away.



Pros: I'm already there, often with time to kill.
Cons: Can't get into the recycling bins (locked). Trash cans have a lot of goods, but it's hit-or-miss. Also, it's a little too awkward for me to be digging through trash during daylight.

Downtown Isla Vista:


Pros: Lot's of kids filtering through. In about the area of a quarter mile square there are at least a half-dozen liquor stores. (Yes, that is just about every varietal and size of Smirnoff imaginable)
Cons: This is the bums' post. It seems that Pirate, Wizard, and the other regulars keep this place relatively clear of cans. They don't seem as systematic or serious as the Gauchos, but they also don't do anything else all day.

Goleta Beach:


Pros: Family barbecues and beach volleyball. They allow cans, and just everyone has some sort of beer going (it warms my heart to see Keystone Ice being consumed by someone other than undergrads). This beach is also right in the flight path of 33L and 33R, so you can watch planes fly over at pretty low altitudes.
Cons: Everyone seems to keep their cans, no one here is rich or careless.

Thanks for reading! Remember to sign up for email notification (info in the sidebar) and tell your friends. Wherever you are, remember to recycle. Recycling an aluminum can requires 95% less energy than making a new one.

-Charles

Weekend Update

Hey All,

So this past Friday was a huge success. After taking a week to fill up one IKEA bag, I was able to fill up two whole bags on Friday alone. I'm trying to smash the cans and crush the plastic bottles to save space.

I took in the recyclables and got $4.58. I used it toward some groceries.

On a side note, I ran into some friends on DP on Friday night. I took a break to hang, and we ended up getting to go up into Storke Tower. It's locked, but brain and brawn were able to overcome. I don't want to mention him by name but it was an impressive feat that got us up there. At the top, the view was spectacular (the photos were not):

You can see the U-Cen (Corner Store at the far left). There was some plexiglass preventing me from using a flash, so the pictures ended up blurry. Also I'm not sure if a flash would have really helped.

I did a little collecting later after things had died down. The dénouement of the evening had to be the a house-fire somewhere on DP. It smelled like burnt rubber and there was a suspicious cloud of whitish smoke floating though DP. Overall, I'm pretty pleased that I was able to so rapidly increase my take. It sort of feels like I'm living a play version of Deadliest Catch.

My brother Andrew is down visiting from SF this weekend, so I'm not collecting for the rest of the weekend.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to tell your friends!

Payday

Hey all,

So today was a big day for C3. After class one last swing through some good on-campus spots, I collected everything together and got ready for the ride to the TOMRA center in Goleta. I got some stick-on velcro straps for the IKEA bag, so I could keep things together for the ride (note the black strip near the handle):


I was able to get it pretty neatly onto my bike. In the future I could wait longer and just pack more into my bike. I could have fit a few more in the basket underneath, and my backback was only about half full:

The bike ride was mostly uneventful, except that I saw "Wizard" napping under a tree by the Santa Catalina towers on my way back home. Wizard, who's real name is apparently Daniel Cardenas, is probably the second most famous bum in IV after the legondary Pirate. Wizard is one of a few permanent drifters who live in Anisqovo Park and help add to the lore of Isla Vista.

When I got to the center, I had to wait a few minutes for a couple of students in front of me to finish up. The whole operation is run out of two metal shipping containers with facing doors. On one side was aluminum (shown below) and the other one held class and plastic. The latter was pretty much empty, but I'll try to grab a shot next time.

The guy running it gave me two wire barrels to separate the plastic and aluminum. Then he weighed the baskets to find how much they were worth. (you can see the display for the scale on the left side of the next photo). As you might expect, TOMRA takes deductions for how wet your recyclables are- water's heavy, after all.


Because I had a good number of recyclables, I got paid by weight and not by item. For the sake of time, it seems that this is how just about everyone does it. The prices can be seen below on my receipt:

Aluminum and plastic pay out $1.57 and $0.97 cents per pound respectively. Glass, which is heavy, pays $0.10 cents a pound. I only had three glasses, so I got paid by the item for those (top line above). The proprietor of the center declined to be in the photo, but he did say "maybe another time". When I told him I was a grad student trying to learn about recycling, he just sort of chuckled.

You can read my total for the trip from the photo: $3.30. It probably works out to somewhere around $1 and hour. That's not a bad start, and I'm confident that I can probably get my totals up if I 1) figure out how to hold more on my bike and 2) find some good on-campus spots where the local Gauchos don't make it. Plus, students are beginning to trickle in, which will turn into a torrent in a about two weeks.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions leave me a comment, and I'll try to comment back.

-Charles

First collecting

Hey all,

So Saturday night was my first try at collecting. I went out around 9:30 and got back at around 11:00. I stopped at a liquor store in IV to get a cardboard box to aid in holding the cans. A side note, I paid 59 for a thing of sunflower seeds, which I'm still enjoying as of post-time. They are a great deal, whatever flavor you decide to go with. So anyway, my bike looked something like this:


I biked the length of Del Playa and it wasn't long until my basket was full. In fact, at the end of DP, where it turns into a park overlooking the ocean, I had to turn away a case of empty 40s (shown on the ground). At 10 cents a pop, that would have easily been another buck:


Overall, I was really impressed by the whole scene. Both school and summer-school aren't in session; the roughly 5,000 freshman won't be here for another two weeks, and yet it was still more partying than I've ever seen my life (outside of previous visits to IV).

In my whole time I only saw one "Gaucho" (UCSB students have given the schools namesake to the can collectors). He was on the outskirts of IV and I'm not even sure he was collecting. I'll bet that I was probably a little too early in the night.

When I got back at home I lined one drawer of my desk with a water-proof Ikea bag, and filled it up. The drawer keeps it sealed and the bag keep any swill from seeping out:


You might notice that all of the tabs are missing; I've been told that you can turn in the tabs en mass on their own as scrap aluminum, and that the can will still be valid for the CRV. I was at a party a few days ago, and I was told that a full one-gallon milk carton can be traded in for a free keg.

All in all, the venture was a greater success than I has anticipated. I won't have an accurate count until I turn the cans in, but I'm guessing I grossed somewhere around $2. At the very least it should cover the 59 cent sunflower seeds. Next time I'll be sure to crush the cans as I collect them, so I can hold more w/o going back. I might try to figure out a way to attach boxes so my basket can hold more.

More to come later this week!
-Charles

P.S.: If you have any questions, post a comment. I'll try to comment back if I can.

Did you know...?

Hello all,

So on today's post I'm going to give a quick lesson on can collection and my plans surrounding it. I promise you will be the belle of the ball when you impress your friends with all of your knowledge of container recycling. Of course, you could also read a good article about the subject of container-deposit legislation:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

So, how exactly does can collection work?

1. Collect cans
2. ?????
3. Profit!

In actuality, it's a pretty nifty process:

• First, you collect your cans (whether by simply saving your empties or dumpster-diving)
• Once you have a sizable amount, you bring them to a reverse vending machine (which is exactly what is sounds like: the machine gives you the money and you give it a can). The picture above is of a RVM (via wikipedia, copyright cleared).
  
• I collect my earnings and take down statistics.
  

Like a shark that hunts schools of fish, my plan is going to be to dumpster dive where students drink en mass: parties on Del Playa are an obvious choice. The CRV (California Redemption Value), so if I hope to achieve any sort of real wage I'll need to maximize efficiency. In the same vein as Moneyball or Robert McNamara, I'm going to take careful statistics of my collection. I'll post my running tally in a google-docs spreadsheet every time I post, and I hope that I can identify when and where I can earn the most.

If you're curious, yes you can also collect glass, although that pays out at a bulk rate (roughly 10 cents a pound), and may be harder to carry around (glass is pretty heavy when you think about it).

I also may have a competitive advantage in collecting around where I live, which is a quasi-gated apartment building exclusive to graduate students. My one concern is that I may face strong competition from the career can collectors- mostly Mexican immigrants who collect cans to supplement their income. I hope to learn more about these people as I get into the whole process (not a whole lot is known about thier own organization), and ultimately my goal is to write about them.

In the meantime, I hope everyone's summer is going well! Talk to you all soon,

-Charles

Welcome to C3: California Can Collection!

This blog is going to start in Sept. 2009. It will be about my adventures trying to make money by collecting cans in California for the CRV redemption while I begin grad school at UCSB.

See you in September!