• OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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    3 days ago

    In turkey there are a lot of people who gather cardboard for recycling for a wage of about 30-40 dollars a day

    Is the USA version of this just pulling copper?

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Stealing copper, getting under older cars and cutting out catalytic converters, yes. Copper is not a big money maker but it’s better than collecting aluminum cans.

      The problem with 90% of crime is poverty. They do hundreds of dollars of damage to make a few bucks. If we had universal basic income or better safety nets these crimes would nearly vanish overnight.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Well, except that it’s nearly always super damaging.

      The US version would be more like collecting cans back when they had a 5 or 10 cent deposit. Today I can’t really think of anything like that. Maybe driving Uber/Lyft. Or just panhandling/begging.

      • Bob@feddit.nl
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        2 days ago

        People do that now in the Netherlands. The bins on the streets of Amsterdam sometimes have little holsters for bottles and tins so you can leave them for people who’d otherwise (or I imagine who still) dig through the rubbish for the deposit.