So How Many Can And Bottle Returns Are Out There In Michigan?

A week or so ago after viewing the amount of empty cans and bottles that we have in our basement and the ones upstairs, too, I went to my Facebook page and wrote the following:

No idea when this all ends but I’m sure when it does I’ll have enough aluminum cans to build that fort in the living room I wanted as a kid.

Cute, right? Where do I come up with this stuff? Just kidding...

But anyway, it came from thinking that we have a huge amount of returnable cans and bottles due to not being allowed to return them to the store because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also got to thinking about how many other people have an equally large, or maybe even larger amount of returnables in their homes because like me, they are in the same glass and aluminum boat.

Well today I got a pretty clear picture as to how many returnables are floating around the state of MIchigan from the Lansing State Journal.

So far, around 50 million dollars worth. That's right, 50 million dollars.

Allow me to do the math for you. At ten cents per, that's 500 millions cans and bottles total so far that have been stacking up since the end of March. And for every week that goes by in the state that we can't redeem our returnables, the count grows by about 70 million cans and bottles total.

Check out the full article here in the Lansing State Journal about this astronomical amount of returnables that will have to be returned some day and the interesting stories behind this issue.

When we all get back to returning all of our returnabes, I think I'll spread it out over a few visits to the store. I mean usually after about 3 cases, my arm starts telling me, "Okay we're good, you can stop feeding the can machine now". However, I do know one thing for sure:

For months, the accumulated alarms that will be going off in unison in full bottle and can return machines across the state will be absolutely deafening.