Igor at sunset near the Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Cancun, Mexico on November 11th.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Lots of empties

Here in Saskatchewan, all drink containers (cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and tetra paks) except milk have a deposit of between 10 and 20 cents added on when you buy them. Then, you bring the empty container back to the return depot, and get your money back.

Many people who camp here leave their empty containers as a donation to the park. We try to bring as many empties as we can back to the depot every Wednesday in the little blue car, but of course the little blue car can only carry so much!

And after a busy weekend, we simply have too many empties!

So yesterday, Ruth went into town with our summer student who had borrowed his parent's truck.

Loaded up and ready to go.

They brought back over $500 worth of empties!

Did some shopping on Amazon yesterday. So did a lot of other people! Due to the Amazon Prime day yesterday, we had a record good day with our affiliate sales, but not as good as I expected.

I bought Ruth a new Asus 11.6" laptop.

ASUS Transformer Book with 11.6-Inch Touch Screen, Intel Bay Trail-T Z3775, 2GB, 32GB, Windows 8.1, Dark Blue (T200TA-DB11T-CA)  - Free Windows 10 Upgrade

Regular $389 but it was on sale for $299 as well as a new Acer 7" tablet regular $129 on sale for $79. One of them is going back, but we wanted to try them both out. I also bought a $30 gift card and automatically got a $5 promo credit for free. I can't believe none of our readers did the same thing. It's essentially free money.

Also, bought Ruth a new pair of Merrell hiking boots the other day from shoeme.ca. Regular $160 on sale for $112. Great deal, and with free shipping.

And, we received our new Garmin GPS that was on sale regular $189 for $119. No need to use it for another two and half months, but at least we've got it for when we leave for Mexico.

So, that's enough shopping! But we got what we needed, and it was all on sale. Our motto...never pay regular price for anything.

Hey, speaking of two and a half months, yesterday was the half way mark of our time here this year! Yay!

A great deal at Amazon.com on a wireless Brother printer. Half price, today only...

Brother MFC-J870DW Wireless Color Inkjet Printer with Scanner, Copier and Fax

And here in Canada, a solar powered post light for under $12 a piece...


24 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh. That is amazing how much money you made. People are crazy not to recycle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many of the empties left behind are because people know that the money goes back into the park. Having said that, there are still people who put them directly in to the trash. We salvage what we can, but I know that some are definitely not recycled, and it's because the people simply don't care. Fortunately, it's a small minority.

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  2. Its always nice to get the money back on your empties we do that on a regular basis.

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    Replies
    1. Yes it is, and all the money raised from the recyclables goes towards the children's playground or activities.

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  3. At Jubilee in Alberta we made $2500 on recycling in 5 months! Yup - a lot of drinking!

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    Replies
    1. Well done! That is always nice money to put in your pocket. When we were at Sturgeon Lake I think the most that we got was about $1200 but it was a much smaller campground. Here last year the park made about $2650.

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  4. There must be a lot of folks leaving the park with headaches!

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  5. I will be interested to hear how Ruth likes her ASUS Transformer Book. I purchased the T100 Model back in the fall and love it. I took it to Mexico for the winter in place of a full-size laptop and now use it pretty much all the time. I did have to purchase a mouse as I found the trackpad on the keyboard hard to use, but other than that, I am a very happy customer. Price was right and the satin red case is striking!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good to hear your review on the Transformer Book even though it isn't quite the same model. I am looking forward to receiving it and working with it. Doing it this way will give me time to get used to it before we head out.

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  6. I like my happy hour, no doubt. However, some people can't appreciate a hike in the woods, to the top of a hill or just a walk around the lake.

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    Replies
    1. We like happy hours too! ;-)

      You are right Chris but they do enjoy getting out on the lake, fishing, tubing and wake boarding.

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  7. No vino, no vida! But we do not litter. To leave your cans for the benefit of the park is a good idea. I like that, and would contribute.

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  8. we have the same kind of campers!! and the same recycling process goes on here too!!

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    Replies
    1. I hope you have good campers when they get the booze in them, we do and that makes it much easier to handle.

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  9. Here in Maine the deposit is 5c per can/bottle... except any size wine bottle is 15c. You don't see many cans laying along side the road here. (actually, there isn't much litter here at all... nice!).... but $500! Wow!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With the amount of the return for recycling you would think that there would be less on the road but it obviously this isn't the case here. Every once in a while you see people out collecting them but that seems to be more on the main roads not the dirt roads. Nice to here you don't have much litter there. That $500 is mostly just from one to two weeks but that includes a holiday weekend in there.

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  10. We visited the Pacific Northwest (US) last year and noticed how few cans and bottles there were lying around. Finally realized that was because the homeless and less fortunate folks pick them up and cash them in. That's one good way to keep the litter problem down. Being from the southeastern US, which does not offer a return deposit, there's a ton of bottle/can trash everywhere, it seems.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Totally agree with you, everywhere should implement a deposit for cans and bottles and then when you return them they refund the deposit back and there would be a lot less trash. Even if you didn't return them then at least someone else would.

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  11. Well the cans do pretty good just selling them as scrap. In face here in Pa I get more from scrap cans than I do for what I call good aluminum. I don't collect but just save my own and mostly just v8 cans... No or very few beer cans....

    They come in at about 3 cents per can recycling. Most weigh close to an ounce and 50-60 cents per pound. Not as god as a deposit but on your own cans it is all extra money as you didn't pay a deposit...
    Garry

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    Replies
    1. I like the system that they have here in Saskatchewan for our recycling, it's very well organized and just makes things easy for us. We go here for most of the recycling and the to the liquor store to return the beer bottles.

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  12. Looks like the park made out like bandits with all that liquor loot!

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    Replies
    1. It's not just liquor/beer containers but all drink containers except milk ones, although the majority of them were alcohol related. Yes. it is a nice bit of extra income for the park!

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