January 30, 2010
Return On Deposit:
Lyme Retiree Keeps Busy, Earns Spare Cash
Dick Stark of Lyme visits the outdoor Lyme recycling center almost every morning, using a potato rake to search for deposit bottles and cans in the giant recycling bin. (Stephen Dunn / The Hartford Courant)
He has been harvesting this all-weather crop off and on since he was a boy, and he reports that on a very good day he can clear $40, or roughly 800 bottles and cans. He remembers when reusable bottles brought 2 cents, sometimes 5, and when the deposit on a 2-liter glass Coca Cola container was 40 cents.
Some residents put their deposit items right in the back of his pickup truck. Stark, whose family has lived in Lyme "for a couple of hundred years" and who retired in 1996 from the U.S. Naval Underwater Sound Lab in New London, gives some away, in turn, to a cousin.
Q: Has the 2009 law requiring deposit on water bottles added to the number of returnable bottles that you collect each day?
A: Yes, yes. Before that there were only a limited number of water bottles that were returnable, the carbonated water bottles. Now ordinary water ones are included, although a lot of them that pre-date the new bottle bill are still showing up. Of course, I see a certain amount of nonreturnable stuff from out of state, too. It's increased my take, but not my income because I give all the plastic bottles away anyway, to a cousin who lives in Old Lyme.
Q: Are you surprised at how many people essentially throw money away every week?
A: I've gotten used to it. I guess it isn't worth the trouble to a lot of people. I can see why. Turning stuff back in is kind of a hassle no matter how you do it.
Q: Are people getting better about recycling and following the recycling rules?
A: Because the rules have changed recently, I suppose you can say people are doing a little better. There is less stuff that is nonrecyclable than there used to be. In Lyme, anyway, they have included a whole bunch of plastics that used to be nonrecyclable onto the list of what can be recycled. They used to take only class 1 and 2 plastics. Now they'll take pretty much anything plastic.
Q: What's been your best day in terms of numbers? What is an average day?
A: A good day is maybe $20 worth, and a really good day, once or twice a year when someone really cleans out their collection, you can get $30 or $40. I give a lot of them away. I used to keep track of how many and what they were, but not anymore. I know pretty much what I do on a weekly basis. We're coming into the slack time of year now. People drink less in the winter, of course. The last big thing this time of year is the Super Bowl parties. Then it's slow going till April.
Q: When did you start collecting and do you do it to supplement your income?
A: It's mostly to keep busy. I started doing it about 40 years ago, before there was a bottle bill. I rode around on my bike collecting aluminum cans. They were worth about a penny apiece for their aluminum content. When I go to the supermarket I bring some bottles and cans and use the money for groceries. It really started out when the bottle bill came in the first time. I figured, why should the distributors get all the money from what people don't return? But under the new bill the state gets the money, so it is probably less patriotic now.
http://www.courant.com/business/hc-fivequestions-stark.artjan30,0,7074930.story
