I forgot to mention, my roommate and I finally accumulated three bags of cans and went down to the bottle deposit place to get our due. Unlike in New York, apparently, regular stores don't accept deposit cans, so you have to go to some dank, smelly warehouse in east Cambridge to claim your reward. And, as I predicted, this warehouse was full of homeless people plying their trade. Also, you have to sort and arrange your own cans. After all that, we got fully $3.20 for our efforts. This is barely enough to buy a latte.
I concluded from this adventure that in order to get the most out of this deposit law, one really needs to have either 10 beer parties a month or 10 soda-guzzling children. But I still intend to go back in June and get another $3 worth of thrift.
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4 comments:
In NY, regular stores might accept the cans, but might not, but even if the ostensibly do, they set strict limits of when you can bring them in and how many you can bring at a time, making it really tough to get that $1.25 or whatever. Or maybe that's just this one Key Food in Brooklyn - once our collection gets big enough, we'll try out a Battery Park City Gristedes, which may be more lenient...
Did the $3 even cover the cost of your and your roommate's transportation to said dank, smelly warehouse in east Cambridge? I know you don't buy into the whole time = money idea, but this seems pretty absurd. This is time you could spend cuddling with Nigel!!
The best can-return system I've seen was one set up in a grocery store chain I would sometimes shop at when I lived in Albany NY. They had several machines near the front of the store where you could insert cans or bottles. The machine would read the bar code and credit you the correct amount. There was a satisfying "crash" when bottles shot through the machine. WHen you were done it would print a receipt that you could take into the store to either get cash or credit towards your purchase. I'd just take my cans when I was going to the store anyway to buy stuff so it was convenient and worked well for everyone. I'm pretty sure I never saw such a set-up in NY City, though, when I lived there.
Alex: It was only a five-minute drive. Cambridge is small. Also, see point about how this strategy would work better if we threw a lot more parties involving beer, preferably beer proffered to us by guests.
Phoebe and Matt: I wish somewhere as decently-lit as a grocery store accepted MA cans.
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