You want to know what the con of recycling is? Space is the 1st one. If you live in a small apartment or some condo community you don’t have the space to store all of that. You will be taking it down to the recycle center often, and only getting a few bucks back out of it. Depending on where you have to drive you are barely covering your gas up and back, so unless you are doing it as a ”feel good” activity you are not making anything off doing it.
Very hard to do if you have space but no car. If you have the space to safe up quite a lot to get to a recycle center you have to have a way to get it there. A lot of mass transit around here will only allow so many bags to haul on its busses and commute trains.
If you do have a vehicle, it has to be the right vehicle. You can’t expect to get much in recycling in a sub compact unless you are willing to cram so much in there that you can only see out of your driver’s side window and the windshield. You don’t have a van, large SUV, or truck, it is very hard. Then you have to use a gas-guzzler just to haul your cans in, so you de facto offset any “green thinking” ideas you had because you are using a lot of gas just to go recycle the stuff.
The smell, unless you are going to take the time to rinse out all the cans and bottle you get the smell of many different soda and alcohol together and you might as well have a pet skunk who cannot hold its scent well. If you don’t have a large vehicle you are now exposing your car’s interior to that smell, drips, and other such stuff.
Then there is the time separating all of it and removing the caps. If you don’t like getting gunk all over your hands and clothes it is not for you.
Recycling is more for those who need it for the income. The garbage company here does all that, if you do not toss it in the recycle bin they provide the trash goes to a transfer station where workers pick through the garbage to remove hazardous items and the recyclable things. Since they have that job, and they would not have work if everyone recycled if I don’t have any friends or family that do recycle to give it to, and I am not going to hunt them down to give it to them, in the trash it goes and I go about my merry way. I don’t need the money that bad to waste time doing it.