If you're a millennial or younger in America, chances are you were taught from
early on to care for the environment and recycle. But while some of us sort and
recycle our waste for environmental reasons, thousands depend on these
commodities to survive. I see it as money. I see the money on the floor every day,
all day. And if I'm in the mood or if I have the energy to, I'll start picking it
up and then once I get a bag of it, it'll get me rolling. If it's like at least
five bucks or over and I can just build on that. Juan Rajir is one of over
130,000 homeless people in the state of California and on
a daily basis he depends on these recyclables to support his family.
My wife and our dog we live in a tent right now and we lost our
apartment a few months ago, so that's what we're dealing with now, we live in a tent.
So we're homeless. I usually don't take one
of these, but when he's with me I take one so he can get, you know, be
comfortable throughout the ride. Huh, boy? Good boy!
The day... sometimes it seems like it's just blurs in there, it does never end,
doesn't ever begin. Like being out here it's not that, it's not that comfortable
sometimes, it's a little dangerous. I try to make it as comfortable on Heather as
possible. I'd rather take all the, like, I guess the blows, if you will, because I
don't want her to have to struggle as much. His day usually starts around the
same time as yours, but unlike most of us, he'll spend the next 12 to 15 hours
pushing a shopping cart while looking for bottles, cans, and other recycles.
Man, I'm almost 50, man, so I figured like riding around on my bike and doing all this has
kept me kind of young, you know? I see guys like half my age
that look shot the f*** out already, shot out. Too soon in life. F*** all that. Back in the mid-80s,
states wanted to incentivize recycling, so they created these bottle bills, which
gave people who recycled certain types of cans and bottles cash on-site, based
on their cash redemption value. Eventually, these rebate laws created an
off-the-books industry of their own, becoming one of the few ways in which
homeless people across the U.S. can make ends meet.
There's places that go by item, like Ralph's, they have machines where
you put every individual can and bottle, they give me the same thing. Like the big,
the bigger cans and the bigger bottles they give you ten cents for. The regular
size ones will give you five cents for. And now, if you really want to break it down and
do it like to get the most when you can, you bring the cans here and the
heavy plastic; and then those water bottles, you'll bring them over there because
they don't weigh nothing. On a good day, Juan can make up to $40, and
while this seems like an effective relationship between the environment and
Juan's survival, what he's doing is technically illegal across the U.S.
Scavengers are putting the Department of Sanitation's recycling program at risk by
removing the most valuable recyclables, both redeemable containers and metal
items. It's technically theft to take anything off the sidewalk that is being
left for sanitation collection. However, the enforcement of the key codes around
scavenging is only when you use a motorized vehicle. But the city does have
a revenue sharing agreement, so to the extent that we have more valuable
portions the recycle stream that aren't there, the less funding we will receive
back. I'm not aware of it being illegal. The cities probably don't want you to do that
because it attracts kind of a different element from them, from the normal kind
of citizen, people that are a little bit more down on their luck and stuff, so I
don't think it's illegal but it's not, it's frowned upon in some places.
Everybody that we know recycles. Usually
people will start out, the ones that like make it a profession, will get up at about
4 in the morning and start, but by the end of the night I'll get about $15
worth of stuff, but it takes me about a good day and a half to get it,
what we need. Heather keeps me civilized, she's the reason why I stay on the right
path. I used to be a little bit more uncivilized, I guess you could say. They
got me for about a good 20 years of my life already in prison. I'm 48, they got
me for most of my twenties and thirties because I did a couple robberies,
I robbed a couple of drug dealers. It makes your mind your enemy, I think that's what,
why the walk comes from, I don't like to be bored, always doing something. So I've
been doing a lot more recycling lately. Juan knows that as people continue to be
more environmentally conscious there will be less plastic and less aluminum
for him to collect in the next few years, but he says that's a good thing. He cares
for the environment, and he says he's hopeful for a better future. I know I'm
capable of almost anything. So yeah, this is just something aside that we're
doing, just to, just keep going until we find out what we're gonna do that's a
little bigger than this.