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Crushing Aluminum Cans, A Process Improvement

April 19th, 2011

Collecting Aluminum Cans, Purpose:

For a field trip, the school my son attends incorporated a program that included crushing aluminum cans in an effort to teach kids about recycling, and a quick lesson in entrepreneurship.

My son was above to save up enough cans (over 6 or more months) to pay for his entire trip this way. The cost per student for the trip was $40. Of course he had to collect cans from family, friends and neighbors.

Crushing Aluminum Cans, Process Improvement

In my last post about my son’s aluminum can entrepreneur adventure, I think I may have mentioned that I discovered a process improvement that makes the task easier.

The process improvement is extremely simple, but make a huge difference in the effort to crush the cans. The secret is to squeeze the cans just slightly so that the integrity of the can isn’t 100%. This creates a flaw in the can and it’s crushes much easier in the can crusher apparatus.

Crushing Aluminum Cans, Performance Improvement

Prior to the process improvement, my son was able to crush cans at a rate of 5 per minute. After teaching him the new technique, he was able to average about 13 cans per minute! That’s a 160 percent improvement! we were able to process the entire bag in 15 minutes versus 45 minutes it would normally take me.

Compression of Aluminum Cans

I was able to crush two large bags full of cans. The sad thing is that they fill up less than 1/4 of the large lawn bags. This is good from me, but my son really hoped there would be more cans in the bag.

So sadly, we had to delay the converting of cans to money at a recycling center. Perhaps we’ll give it another go in the very nearby future.

Lessons Learned For My Son

My son learned 2 things from this last bout of crushing aluminum cans!

Simple changes to the process can have huge performance differences
The benefits of the compression process drastically reduces the space requirements for the cans in the bag. A overflowing full bag was reduced to about 1/5 of the original size. He was amazed, even if he doesn’t get paid sooner than later.

-MR

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Posted in Entrepreneurship

Tags: crushing aluminum cans kid jobs process improvement recycling aluminum cans small business for kids

Creating Opportunities To Become Rich Using eBay

April 13th, 2011

I once worked with a technical contractor (let’s call him Bill) that had the special gift of seeing opportunities that others would consider as garbage. Not only was Bill a technical contractor, Bill was also became an accidental eBay entrepreneur!

During a four-year time span, my friend became an expert at creating opportunities on eBay which helped him become rich! Today, I’m going to tell his story of the way he made over $100, 000 on eBay by selling what some considered junk Cisco parts and routers!

It was the year 2001, and the tech industry was coming out of a spending freeze. A few years in the tech market is like 20 years in normal time, or so it seems. Many of the companies had old outdated Cisco routers and now those businesses suddenly had a budget for spending on new technology once again. So many companies pitch or sold their Cisco routers at bargain prices since most businesses considered them junk because they were older and slower than the new Cisco stuff.

Back then, Bill had a desire to learn the ins and outs of Cisco routers, so he went on eBay and started looking to buy a few routers that he could use to setup a lab to help him get Cisco certified. He quickly found a few cheap routers and bought them. To his surprise, he realized that the price he paid for the router didn’t take into consider the T1 communications card. The T1 card was worth as much as he paid for the entire router! Also surprising was the fact that there were a huge number of these exact routers for sell on eBay. Instantly, Bill realized the great opportunity that he had!

You see Bill only paid around $1,000 for each router, but he could take the T1 card out of the Cisco router and turn around and sell both the card and the Cisco router for around $2,000! That is a $1,000 profit, and a 100% profit margin percentage return! He didn’t waste any time buying and selling this Cisco cash cow that he discovered!

As he was making money via his discovery, he still got his Cisco certification with the routers that he bought to learn with. This is when he came up with the brilliant idea of creating a Cisco Certification kit! He would provide the configuration need to accomplish 2 types of certification and sell his new creation for a more profitable price that just selling the Cisco routers alone. This little modification increased his profit margin percentage return to 160% on his Cisco certification kits!

Both fortunately and unfortunately, demand outstripped the amount that he could buy. Since we worked as a contractor, he would miss deal during work hours and during night. At least until he came up with the idea of writing a program that would detect the auctions of this particular Cisco router target, and email him. He had his application setup so that if he replied to an email, his application would buy the Cisco routers for him! This enabled him to overcome the supply problems because he was not buying them up as fast as they would be listed on eBay!

He actually went so far as to modify this program to automatically buy such auctions when they came online, but he only used it a few times because of the potential risk associated with a bad buy.

During these times, Bill confided to me that he was making over $80,000 a year on his little eBay business that he created. And the beauty was that it was big bucks right from the start! Often times a new business could take years to build up to profitability, but here he was making great money right of the bat!

Just guessing what he was making as a contractor at the time, I would have to guess that he was clearing over $200,000 per year from working as a contractor and selling his lucrative Cisco kits!

I learned from my friend to keep my eyes open for opportunities, because there are opportunities all around us, waiting to be discovered.

-MR

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Posted in Entrepreneurship

Tags: ebay ebay business eBay cash cow getting rich on eBay Getting rich with ebay making money making money with eBay online opportunity thinking outside of the box to become rich

Uncrushed Aluminum Can Infestation

March 17th, 2011

We have an Infestation of Uncrushed Aluminum Cans!

Aluminum Cans

It’s true, if you go into my garage, we have 2 full bags of uncrush cans that are practically spilling over! My wife is sick and tired of looking at all of THOSE CANS!

I can’t blame my wife for wanting them gone, but this winter has been so cold, snowy and overall soul zapping, that I just didn’t have the spirit to try to eradicate them.

That will all change tomorrow though, I’m going to RAID the infestation and exterminate those nasty uncrushed cans! You see, tomorrow the temperature is supposed to kiss at least the low 60s! So I’m going to drag my son out into the garage to dig into them.

He started crushing cans to make money as an experiment. In case you didn’t get a chance to read my article, it’s called, ”Is Recycling Aluminum Cans Worth Doing Anymore?“. In it, I examine if it’s really worth it to recycle cans.

Even though he likes the money and likes the environment impact that he is making, he still hates to crush the cans and does a sloppy job sometimes, but he’s only 10 years old. At first I didn’t understand why he did such a sloppy job, but after spending a few hours crushing cans the last time, I understand. It’s because it’s a hard process, especially for a light 10-year-old!

Since that last time I crushed the cans, I’ve learned how to optimize the process so that the cans could be crushed both more optimally and quickly.

MR’s Improved Crushing Process:

First I use the can crusher shown below
Next I’ve learned to slightly bent the can siding so that it’s just a very slight bend to it. Too much and the can buckles. When a can buckles, it bend and you get a bad crush since it just bends in half. By slightly bending the can, the act of crushing the can is at least 2 fold easier to do in the can crusher device! That’s because when it’s unbent, it has structural strength! But a slight dent on the can wall is it’s Achilles heel.
Crush the cans above ground level and drop the can in the bag that’s directly below the crusher and can. This makes it much nicer on your back.

Can Crusher

It’s good to find little tricks of the trade, and just a little bend on the can container makes a huge difference!

I’m looking forward to getting rid of the cans along with the bad weather!

-MR

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Posted in Entrepreneurship

Tags: aluminum cans Crushing Cans Optimal way to crush cans

Recycling Aluminum Cans Update, A New Center

December 16th, 2010

Getting Paid for recycling

My son started recycling Aluminum Cans as part of a school fundraiser so his 4th grade class could go on a special annual road trip to our capital.

Starting the Recycling Process

After the school fundraiser was over, my son realize that there was money to be had. and it helped the planet. So showing off his budding entrepreneurial skills, he wanted to continue the recycling aluminum can activity.

So we collected cans for a few months, both my son and I crushed the cans, but I did the majority of the crushing. My son didn’t get to experience the bagging of the cans, the transportation of the cans to the recycling center, the weighing of the cans, and finally the money received for delivering the crushed cans. It was an interesting experience going to the recycling center, and not what I imagined it would look like.

Expanding the Experience

While driving about doing Christmas activities, my wife unintentionally discovered a recycling center in out local city near the edge of town. Knowing that my son didn’t get to experience much of the recycling experience, she suggested next that I go there and take him along too.

This was a fabulous idea! My only concern would be that this company is a middleman company that’s going to pay us a lower rate, but even if my fear is true, that could be a great learning opportunity for my son! I could explain to my son how this middleman company just collects the cans paying the people a lower payout than the payout that we received when I took them to the larger recycler up where I work at.

Conclusion

I’m excited about the local recycling center that my wife found! This will broaden my son’s experience with the entire aluminum can recycling process! Once we get the next bag full ready, I think I will let him do the talking with the people at the new center. I will just be backup in case something isn’t clear.

I’m look forward to seeing my son expand his business experience with this small venture!

-MR

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Posted in Entrepreneurship

Tags: aluminum cans aluminum recycling Kids

Getting Paid for Recycling Aluminum Cans Update

November 30th, 2010

Getting Paid for recycling

Getting Paid!

At my son’s school, they had the kids collect aluminum cans for a school trip to the big city in my state. It was a win-win because the kids paid for their trip by doing something beneficial for the planet…

After the trip was over, I encouraged my son to continue to collect the cans as a money-making experiment! I told him I would find a way to get money for the cans that he collected and crushed.

After he starting collecting the cans, I wasn’t sure if I could find a place to turn in the cans for money after all. I created the post called: “Is Recycling Aluminum Cans Worth Doing Anymore?” because of doubts that it would be worth it (especially taking in a long drive to do so).

Well I’m happy to say that I did find a recycling plant and as an added bonus, it was less than 2 miles away from where I work!

So what was the payout that my son got paid?

For the 16 lbs of the crushed cans that I took in, he received $10.40! The price per can turned out to be 65 cents per lbs!

I was actually quite surprised with the payout! I thought that cans were going for 40 cents per lbs in my area, so I expected a number closer to $6.00 for the single bag I took to the recycling plant.

It was a pleasant surprise for the both of us!

A side perk of recycling the aluminum cans was that I found out that the recycling plant also take many other metals too. And the biggest find was that they take old computer and monitors for free!

Our experiment is now done, but we both are much better at the entire process, so who know… I may continue the process…

Have you ever considered participating in a recycling program?

If you don’t care about getting money for your recycling efforts, check out nearby fire stations, call them and ask if they take aluminum cans or plastic water bottles. I know that they will recycle the cans and give the money to burn victims, or at least that’s the case in our area!

-MR

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Posted in Entrepreneurship

Tags: aluminum cans aluminum recycling Kids