Cans to Newcastle

August 10, 2026

Greetings from pitheCanthropus,

Thousands of years ago, men were responsible for certain activities to support the family unit.  This often took the form of hunting for food, or defending against saber-toothed sloths, maybe sharpening a stone.  Sometimes he was involved in painting images on the cave wall, but usually the wrong color, which would need to be repainted to match the drapes.

(I recognize these are sexist stereotypes, but it dilutes my theme if I devote too much space to misogynistic practices of the prehistoric household.)

I feel compelled to follow the example set by early men, still maintaining the legacy of thousands of years of hunting and foraging for the survival of the tribe. It is hard, sometimes dangerous, but I feel it’s my duty, and since I can’t hunt or forage, I employ other skills.

I take back the cans and bottles.

In my state, most beverages are sold with a deposit, usually ten cents.  The purpose of the deposit is to discourage the neanderthals among us from flinging our beer cans out the window of our truck as we drive along the roads that line the pristine coast of our Great Lakes.  I assume this plan is working because it’s created a whole new social structure.

Once you have consumed the beverage, you return the empty container to wherever you bought it, and they give you back your ten cents. It’s kind of like a ransom, in reverse.  We have to bring the cans back, and then our dime is released safely. 

This process takes various forms. In smaller shops, you can walk in with an anonymous bag of miscellaneous clanking and clinking things and tell the proprietor you have thirty bottles and cans, and he hands you $3.00.  Other retailers take the attitude of Homeland Security:

“Can you prove the natural citizenship of these receptacles?”

So the simplest answer is to go to a big box store that has these enormous machines that sort the returnables. It is an interesting gathering place, crowded and noisy and smells like a mixture of body odor, beer and Pepsi.  Not quite as festive as a Willy Nelson concert, but you get the idea.

The machines accept the various bottles and cans in these ports with conveyer belts inside. Through some magic the machine reads the label and either rejects it or accepts it, with a somewhat arbitrary method in my experience.  It also resents if you go too fast, or put in the wrong brand, or your hand, or a hamster. I also suspect the machines discriminate against bald men, but that could be an interpretation.

It’s kind of a dirty job but I don’t mind it; I want to do my part for the environment, my family, and to carry on the tradition of the primitive caveman.  Plus, I get money. I realize the money I get back is already mine, but because I have the brain of a caveman, it still delights me.

There are various types of people who show up at the recycle machines. I know it’s unfair to generalize this way, but that doesn't make it less true:

There are the Meticulists: They come with the containers rinsed and organized by brand, tidily stored in reusable boxes.  There are the Professionals: These are usually people who have entire shopping carts filled with cans they have collected from all over the county. The Accumulators: people who store their empty bottles in their cars and only come in when the back seat is full. Then there are the Specialists: they will have all Budweiser or all Mountain Dew, usually in quantities that would suggest they are anticipating the apocalypse, or are saving up for a new car.

We rarely speak.  It’s kind of like running into people while trying on bathing suits at T.J. Maxx.   Don’t make eye contact, don’t start conversations.  I do see the various types glancing at each other surreptitiously, making judgments.  I would never do this, of course, because I am an enlightened homo sapiens.

Sometimes it feels like something from a science fiction movie, all of us bringing our trash in to feed these machines that clank and clunk and hiss and ultimately spit out a piece of paper, which we then trade for a piece of cheese.  Kind of like Blade Runner, with better lighting.

I have become accustomed to the process, so it doesn’t bother me to stand in line with all the other collectors to return my containers.  I like to think I am living up to the traditions of my ancestors.  Gathering the valuable things, Coke Zero, Zevia, Hooma Lupa Licious, and then bringing them back to the cave, changing them into food to sustain the family.  It’s really a privilege, but one where your hands end up smelling like a hoppy IPA.

I imagine a thousand years from now anthropologists will sift through our remains and wonder what we were doing, if we worshipped these machines we gave the cans to, or if it was some complicated Dungeons and Dragons game.  But ultimately, they would come up with a name for us: Recyclus Erectus.

Hope this finds you mining for deposits,

David

This essay was written by the author and does not include Ai content.

Copyright © 2026 David Smith