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The Seinfeld Life can land you in prison

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by dixiehack, Jul 26, 2016.

  1. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

  2. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    He didn't return the bottles, though. He never actually committed a crime.
     
  3. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    It's confusing. Places give you money to return cans (other than a recycling center paying by the pound)?

    Why are bottles and cans used interchangeably in the story?

    It facsinates me what stories from the U.S.A. interest the British rags.
     
  4. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    Take away the 'Seinfeld' angle, and this isn't even a story for a local newspaper let along a newspaper in another country.
     
  5. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Container deposit legislation in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    In certain states, beverage containers (including cans and bottles) have a few cents extra tacked onto the price as a deposit. When you return the containers, you get that money back. Almost every state that does it sets the deposit at five cents, but in Michigan it is a dime (and thus if you were going there anyway, it is more profitable to return your empties there.)
     
    Ace likes this.
  6. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    "Things the Daily Mail covers besides Poin for $400, Alex ..."
     
    Vombatus likes this.
  7. fossywriter8

    fossywriter8 Well-Known Member

    Grew up in Iowa, graduating high school in 1987. Aluminum cans and plastic bottles (including the 2-liters) had a 5 cent deposit, glass bottles had a 10 cent deposit. That works out to $1.20 per case of canned pop and 80 cents per eight-pack of glass bottles (the eight packs were still very popular then).
    Stepbrothers' dad was a trucker. He'd buy canned pop by the case in another state (I think it was Illinois), stack them in the truck cab up to the window and bring them into the state. If I remember right, he could get 18 flats (cases) of pop up to the bottom of the window and they couldn't be seen from the outside.
    When they were emptied, he'd turn them in — $21.60 for all 18 cases. As with Michigan, redeeming cans and bottles you bought in a state without a deposit was illegal in Iowa.
    This was back when a can of pop in a machine cost just 50 cents (no deposit required for machines), but the cost for a case was much less per can, though you did still have to tack on the deposit. It might have been around $2.50 per case, plus the deposit, so the deposit added a lot percentage-wise to the final price.
    Redeeming the cans and bottles was a big deal. I can remember some places wouldn't take them unless you rinsed out the cans, and many wouldn't let you redeem crushed cans for a while.
     
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