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Vice Blog

THE BOTTLE REPORT - TABS Vs. TOPS

"You reset." One of the Chinese women yells at Milton. We are back at Fine Fare hanging out with Milton and Thelma, and the damn bottle machine is broken again.

"I what?"

"You reset," she mimics reaching over the machine and unplugging the power cord above it.
Milton climbs up on a bucket, reaches over the top of the machine--pretty much the same size as its coordinate device, the soda machine--and yanks on a cord. The cable itself is the kind of 220v cord that a washer or a refrigerator uses. Milton crashes down, plug in hand, and the woman starts to yell again.

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"Now back-in! Now back-in!" Milton had managed to turn the machine off, but getting it back on again was going to require a little more effort.

Milton tries various buckets and barrels and eventually someone wheels over a cart. Keep in mind that Milton is a 53-year-old black dude who has been recycling as a job for over 15 years. Now he's balancing on top of an open shopping cart. There is a pretty good chance he is going to fall right into it if any of the four unlocked wheels slip when he reached up.
Igor, my photographer, has seen enough, and hands me his camera bag, "I'll get up there, let me do it." He steps on the smaller bucket and climbs onto the bigger one.

I should have maybe stopped him. He really destroyed his knee a month before and the doctor said if it didn't get better on his own he would need surgery. But I wasn't really thinking about that at the time. He scrambles up the front of the machine and lunges at the cord, knocking it back in on the first try.

"Yay!" everyone screams in five languages. The screen blinks back on.

Igor hops off the cart and crashes through the black flower bucket, shattering one side, and nearly knocking over a small Chinese woman in the process.

I forget to ask him if his knee is okay.

"Here we go! We back in business!"

With the goodwill we had garnered after fixing the machine, we used this as a chance to get Thelma to talk to us some more. We wanted to know how she started working in the recycling industry.

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"I was up to 180 and I was too fat across my stomach. Now I'm down to 160. They tell me keep walking 'cause that's my exercise."

"160?" Milton snorts "Get outta here!"

"160--unless I lost a few more pounds since I weighed myself HA HA HA HA!" Thelma started collecting bottles a few years ago "I have no job. I take medication. Diabetes medication and other medication, but I want something to do. I figure I enjoy this--being out with the people and I pick up a little bit of change. And it's good."

Igor asks to take a picture of Thelma. "A picture of me? No way!" Igor insists, reminding her how beautiful she looks. "I mean, now I'm gorgeous since I lost all this weight… fine, go ahead." As she is posing, I ask her if she ever uses any other bottle machines than the two on E. 3rd Street that Igor and I have been frequenting.

"I go here or to Union Square at Food Emporium. But they only take $12 at a time. Excuse me!" she darts away from us and runs up to the Chinese woman at the plastic machine. "I'm next there. I'm next!" Thelma looks up and realizes that the Chinese lady has already somehow deposited 30 bottles since Milton had finished. "Hey! Hey!" Thelma calls after Milton. They know each other from the neighborhood, but she doesn't remember his name. "Did you get your ticket?"

Milton walks back over to grab his receipts. He's made about $19, but the store will only let him collect a maximum $12 each day. He has to come back during a different shift so they won't know he has already cashed out today. The receipts are good for only one business day so they can't hoard them. Thelma says that some people will pay kids $2 to cash the receipts for them so they don't have to wait. Milton just walks in with a friend of his from the neighborhood and splits up the receipts. Saving the $2 is 40 less bottles he has to pick up. These rules could only possibly be designed to prevent people from pulling up to the store with vanloads of pre-sorted recycling. A full shopping cart usually yields about $10.
Thelma takes a broom from between the soda collection machines and sweeps the bottle tops that are cluttering the sidewalk around the machines. They end up on the ground in front of the shops until someone like Thelma comes along and sweeps them away. "We don't want somebody to slip," she says with genuine concern. We ask her about some rumors we had heard.

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"We heard people save the Coke tops, and there are certain people who collect the tabs."

"And do what with 'em?" Thelma asks.

"They take them to the hospital and sell them."

"These plastic tops?"

"No them tabs on the cans."

"I know about the tabs on the cans," Thelma snaps.

There is a very well-entrenched urban legend that there are dentists and hospitals that will buy your bottle tabs for hundreds of dollars if you collect enough of them. Some people say dentists melt them down to make braces and bridges. Others hear they can make crutches and prosthetic limbs or even scalpels and medical tools. We've met dudes who carry everything they own in a single granny-cart which includes a blanket, a jacket, and a gallon-jug of metal pull tabs. They're all waiting to hear about this dentist who will turn them in for cash. They will be carrying those cans around forever because no one is going to buy them. We did some research. A full pound of aluminum tabs in scrap metal is worth somewhere around $0.55. The Coke caps are a different story--the current top prize on mycokerewards.com is $10,000 and Thelma knows this.

"You put them on the internet and if your numbers come up, you get paid!" She turns to Milton "You think I'm playing you? I know a lady who told me to hold all my Coca-Cola and Pepsi tops. If you hit the right game, you're money."

TEXT BY BRENDAN SULLIVAN
PHOTOS AND ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NATE "IGOR" SMITH

Previously:
The Bottle Report - Week 1
The Bottle Report - Secrets of the Orient