In Michigan, we have a 10¢ deposit on cans and bottles. They’re refunded by feeding empties into a machine that counts them up. But there are never enough machines, so a line forms. And right now I’m watching 7 dopes inspect each container individually before feeding it into the machine.
These machines used to require you to put the barcode into the right position. Maybe they’re still used to those machines and therefore look for the barcode on each container?
Possibly. I remember those, they would take the can in, then spin them so the lasers could find the barcode. These new machines don’t do that. I’ve fed the cans in with the barcode against the belt, and the machine can still tell what they are.
Well, even before those, there were machines which wouldn’t spin the can. It would just conveyor-belt it under the sensor, not find a barcode and then conveyor-belt it back out, until you turned it the right way around…
Probably because, like most of us, they are underpaid, under trained, and over worked.
I remember when I was in high school working in a grocery store bottle room, crushing all the cans people brought in. Those jobs are gone, now the customers put the cans in themselves, and the machine detects and sorts them into the right bin.
Here in Sweden we have that too, and we just got new machines in many of the bigger stores which sorts for you. You open the lid and there’s an angled wheel with indents which pulls up the bottles and cans you pour in from your bags, and they end up on a conveyor belt for scanning and sorting. While not magically fast, it really does help when people have a ton of bottles and cans
My mom lives in a small town in Norrland that has a single grocery store with only one machine. The machine is almost always broken! I haven’t seen the new machines you’re describing, but I hope her town gets one soon.
I live in the US in a state without a deposit system, so I put all my recyclables into one bag and walk it down the hall to my building’s recycling chute. No need for sorting because it all gets sorted at the recycling facility.
man I wish this was national.
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them next time?
I’d rather snark at them online behind their backs. I have no idea which of them are armed.
Because each store only takes cans from products sold there. So if you buy from 2 grocery stores you gotta do it twice. They might be checking it is one taken at Meijer or whole foods or whatever.
I have memory issues.
Whenever I recycle I forget what a recyclable container is. And phone chargers.
Do you live near the border with Ohio and Indiana? I don’t think those states have a deposit program. Michigan may have a rule they only take cans that are properly marked. The recycling center may not get paid of an Ohio or Indiana can comes through their system. I live in Maine and our cans are stamped ME-10¢.
