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Beer Bottles and Social Change

I was staring at the recycling instead of taking it outside and a money-making idea came up. Nonprofits are always looking for ways to generate funds. Constant fundraising is just part of the nonprofit world, unless you have a huge endowment or a profit center to generate some income.

How could a big supply of old bottles be turned into money by an enterprising social activist? It seems likely that collecting and recycling the bottles is going to be a massive waste of time. This may not be true.

If you are ambitious you will decide to recycle the bottles by making them into something. The crushed glass could be sold to artists, I suppose. The bottles could be melted down and made into decorative pieces like flower vases and tiles. So, there are a couple of bottle business ideas.

The basic idea of looking for "trash" and turning it into something marketable can be extended to other types of junk and other types of buyers. The point is to figure out what you have available and then how to monetize it. A list of items that could be collected and sold includes lots of familiar things:

1. aluminum cans
2. newspapers
3. plastic bottles
4. scrap from demolition sites - you might have to compete for the good stuff
5. used vegetable oil - bio diesel if you have the money.
6. rotten food - Can you sell compost to urban gardeners? Can you make methane?
7. road kill - render it down to produce fuel oil, tan the hides and make things?
8. wrecked cars
9. small appliances - can openers, microwaves, coffee makers
10. junk electronics - MP3 players, mobile phones, tablets

Some of those things will need some research to see what you could realistically make. You can do some online research to see what creative products others have come up with. Could you duplicate their feat, without getting in legal trouble?

All you need is one product you can reclaim and a local market for whatever you can make.

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