Shop NYC Top

I’ve lived here long enough to know that there are folks who will show up the night before the trash pickup day for some buildings and extract any cash-redeemable recyclables, namely cans and bottles.

I also recently acquired a can crusher, so I can take fewer trips to my building’s recycling bin since empties take up a lot of room (also I’m lazy and crushing a can gives me a hit of dopamine I didn’t expect to get). But once the can has been crushed, I know that the machines that you feed the cans into can’t scan the barcode, and thus they aren’t redeemable at those machines.

Does anyone know if these can collectors have other ways of redeeming their recyclables? Or am I potentially screwing some people that could use the money by “ruining” the can.