It’s hard to imagine why any cash-strapped college student would willingly throw money away: but that is what we do each and every time we recycle a beer can at Wesleyan.

In Connecticut bottles and cans from beer, malt, carbonated soft drinks, carbonated mineral water and water are all eligible to be returned for 5 cents. Eleven US States currently have bottle bills: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Vermont. Bottle and can return machines, which are generally located at grocery stores, are a kind of reverse vending machine; empty bottles go in and change comes out.

Many deposit programs started in the 1970’s, a time when few towns had curbside recycling programs. The idea behind deposit programs is that the refund value of the container will provide an incentive to return the container for recycling. In Michigan, the only state with a 10-cent deposit, 96 percent of eligible containers are recycled.

The important thing to remember here is that you’ve already “deposited” the money when you bought your drink at the store. The retailer, who has passed the fee from the beverage distributor onto your purchase price, is holding onto your money until you bring that empty bottle back. If you never return the bottle, you’re out of luck when it comes to your 5 cents.

But what happens to that money when your bottle goes unreturned? Who gets to keep the money? In Connecticut, bottle distributors had been keeping the money from unclaimed deposits, an arrangement they lobbied hard to protect. But recently Connecticut legislators, faced with mounting budget woes, voted to make unclaimed deposits the property of the state as of April 30, 2009.

While living on Home Avenue, I’ve noticed Middletown residents combing through students’ recycling bins and picking out bottles. One university staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, said that he “regularly collects bottles and cans on his walks to and from work and around town.” It hit me pretty hard when I realized that I could have made a pretty penny if I’d been as smart as those year-round residents of Middletown during my 4 years here.

Why is it that it is impossible to find one Wesleyan student that regularly returns their bottles and cans? Grocery stores are not located within walking distance from campus, the lack of good public transportation in Middletown and general student laziness all factor into our non-bottle returning campus culture. The same Wesleyan staff member who collects bottles around campus admitted, “If you have a lot of loose cans and bottles, returning the empties can take a lot of time. The machines at the supermarkets can be a hassle, as they are often broken, or you have to wait behind someone with a lot of returns. That makes a handy excuse for not going back to the store” But is laziness making us all miss out on a serious chunk of cash?

Let’s look at (what some students would call) a conservative estimate for number of beers drunk in the course of one school year. If a Wesleyan student drank one beer for every day of school (let’s say 170 days) and returned every empty beer bottle or can they’d come out with about $8.50. Not enough to put a significant dent in your tuition, but enough to buy another six-pack. Just imagine how much you could rake in from a party.

Beer bottles and cans (along with a host of other drink containers) are a reality on any college campus. So why not make the most of it? If one campus group started a bottle return program on campus, I bet they could add to their finance account in a big way. How great would it be if a student group came to your house to lug away bottles and cans after a party? Student’s wouldn’t have to wait till trash day to get rid of large amounts of refuse, student groups would make money with a small amount of labor and we’d all be ensuring that bottles and cans (which so often get chucked onto the street or into the wrong bin) would end up recycled. Good deal for the party-throwers. Good deal for the student group. Good deal for the environment.

As a Wesleyan student did you know that you could receive money for returning your bottles and cans? Do you ever take your bottles back to Stop & Shop or A&P? How many beers do you think you drink in a school year? Let us know in the comments section.

After reading this article are you just dying to drink a bottle of something so you can have the experience of returning it for 5 cents? Keep reading.

This recipe puts a twist on the childhood experience of making black and brown cows (root beer floats made with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, respectively).

For this recipe you should pair good quality vanilla, chocolate or coffee ice cream with a dark bitter beer. Use a dark ale, stout or porters (try Magic Hat’s Ravell or Feast of Fools, Sierra Nevada’s Porter or Stout and Guinness). This is not the time to use up that can of Miller High Life wallowing in the back corner of your fridge. Get a beer that you’d savor slowly, not one that you’d pump out of a keg. You want a beer that already has some caramel-y, chocolate–y notes, but it also bitter enough to cut through the sweetness and creaminess of the ice cream.

It’s a drink, it a dessert, it’s so hearty; it could even fill in for dinner.

Beer Float

Serves One (easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled etc.)

Ingredients:

1 good quality beer

Vanilla, chocolate or coffee ice cream

Instructions:

1. Add desired amount of ice cream into a tall glass.
2. Pour beer over ice cream
3. Serve.

About Andrew Dermont

Andrew Dermont organized the overhaul of the Argus website. He is now the Blargus Editor and oversees the publication of all online-specific content.