As I recently mentioned, I’ve been shopping for a new lawn mower. Well, after today’s trip to the recycling center, I have figured out a way to pay for the new mower.

I am going to collect and recycle aluminum soda cans.

Here’s the plan -

One aluminum soda can weighs .5 ounce, which means that it takes 32 aluminum cans to equal 1 pound.

Currently, 1 pound of aluminum cans can be sold to the recycling plant for $.70.

The new lawn mower that I want retails for $1400.

I need to collect and recycle 2000 pounds of aluminum cans.

At 32 cans per pound, I need to collect and recycle 64,000 aluminum cans!

While I have been planning to purchase a new lawn mower this spring, I might wait until next spring. If I give myself 365 days to collect and recycle 64,000 aluminum cans, I’ll need to pick them up at a rate of 175 cans PER DAY!

To be honest, I don’t see how in the world I’ll be able to find 175 cans, per day, every day, for a year, but I think I’ll give it a shot. We live on a dirt road and there are plenty of places to park my truck, walk for a mile or two, and pick up cans. I’ll try to do my ‘can hunting’ when I’m taking necessary trips, so as not to waste gas. And, I’ll look for places where people are simply discarding cans and see if I can haul the cans off for them. The recycling center is between our house and town, so I won’t have to go out of my way to drop off the cans.

One side note – Apparently, certain cans weigh more than others. I weighed six cans from six different companies, and the lowest weights ranged from .45 ounce to .60 ounce. Hopefully, I’ll find more of the .60 ‘ouncers’!

Edit: If you are looking for information about state bottle deposit laws – check out BottleBill.Org.