Price of Metal Increases Value of SVDP Can Recycling

The cans donation program – organized by St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County – buys medicine for needy people, a critical bit of support for those who lack health care. Volunteers, such as the students and parents at St. Paul’s Catholic School, collected and sorted the cans to help out the nonprofit agency. But a high market price for metal just made the labor-intensive effort a whole lot easier. Instead of sorting cans and handing them over to a beverage recycler for 5 cents a pop, unsorted cans are now being sold as scrap.

St. Vincent Executive Director Terry McDonald realized that selling the cans as scrap metal might be easier than dealing with a recycler – and possibly more lucrative, even though each can nets less than a nickel.

The price of scrap metal has jumped in recent years with pure aluminum now fetching about 74 cents a pound, McDonald said. It takes 25 pop cans to make a pound, so redeeming at 5 cents apiece makes more sense for your average consumer. But other nondrink cans that can’t be redeemed for a nickel can be sold as scrap, he said.

Full story and source Oregon Register-Guard