The ultimate recycler - Utah man saves 70,000 beer cans

Paul Michael — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 04:47:10 +0000

Wow, am I late to the news. But hey, it's a great frugal story or recycling, even if it is completely insane.

The story broke in May of last year by Utah station KSL . I thought it was an urban legend, but it's all real. The Utah chap, who I won't name here, collected these cans over an unknown period of time. But with 70,000 in the house, it works out at 1 beer PER HOUR every day for EIGHT YEARS. That's a ot of drinking. Presumably, it took more like 15 years to accumulate. Thispack-rat style of hoarding is not unheard of, with many people living in homes filled with garbage. It is believed these people can't throw anything away because they feel like they're throwing a part of themselves away.

As someone who has recycled cans for a long time for free, I wondered what 70,000 cans would get back in cold, hard cash. I was actually shocked that it was only $800! Seems like a rip-off for that amount of metal.

Just in case you can't quite make them out, the cans are all Coors Light. I suspect the Coors Light folks aren't going to be jumping on this PR opportunity anytime soon. Have you heard of any stranger collections? Let us all know in the comments area. Now, I'm off to drink a few thousand cans of beer...and a bag of peanuts.

Written by Paul Michael and published on Wise Bread. Read more articles from Wise Bread.