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This is over due. What have I been doing these past four months since my last post I hear you ask? Well, heaps actually.
First of all, I bailed on my South East Queensland existence and made my way north. I have since had four different jobs ranging from landscaping to salesperson. I have finally finished settling into my new home with my wife and children. I have finally found new walking tracks and have only just begun to explore the area around me! The possibilities here are endless! And yes, I have found the local cans dispensary. My can investments have fallen to the way side due to the fact that I needed to cash them in to make the big move. I have been left with no choice but to start again. So here we are. New Year, new can adventure. Today I made my way to the can dispensary and cashed in a small harvest. First thing that should be noted is that the can dispensary in Bundaberg is toats molates or as the cool kids would say, totally heckers.... It’s busy, and noisy, and smelly but still popular. Mostly the experience I have had visiting the dispensary has been a pleasant one with only one exception. I had one old man push in front, I tolerated it as he looked like he could use all the help he could get. In total I collected $12.20 from my haul. So, as of today I have a total of $12.20 cents. That’s 122 units collected and cashed. I still have all my silver I bought using the previous cans but I am not going to count these in this years tally! I am starting fresh! Any new gold or silver bought with this years can money will be included but not last years hoard, that has since moved into the family treasury. While walking I have found plenty of cans to harvest. But also while walking I have noticed I am far from the only person harvesting bottles and cans in Bundaberg. But that’s the way the can crumbles I guess, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy competition. Perhaps I will need to get up early, after all, the early bird gets the great northern bottle. Total = $12.20
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This update has been delayed for far too long! What the hell have I been doing you may ask?! Rest assured that I have still been collecting cans from the side of the road like a person trying to get up enough coins to buy a loaf of bread. I can still feel the eyes of the judgmental on me as they drive past in their fancy cars! Na, just kidding. I don't really care for what people think. I collect cans because cans currently have value and they can be transferred into investments! One day I will have a fancy car too! Just wait and see! This is a joke of cause, because I have no intentions of ever having a fancy car. Unless Elon Musk wants to gift me a Tesla Cybertruck, that would be freaking sweeeeeet!
Anyways, I have managed to collect enough cans lately to add another $50 worker block to my investment portfolio. The newest member to the portfolio is Aussie Dividends (SYI) which will pay out several times a year (four times I believe) into my nominated bank account. Actually come to think of it, my first series of dividends were recently paid out, so now it is official! My cans are having 'can' babies and they are beginning to really work for me as planned! How many can babies were born? Sixty Five of them to be exact! Basically put the Aussie Top 200 (IOZ) paid me $6.50 just for holding my shares in this ETF. It must be noted though that the overall price of the ETF has fallen slightly in recent weeks due to the COVID Uncertainty Principle or C.U.P (invented by me and used by no-one). C.U.P is a fancy way to say that the plague is really messing with the economy. I expect prices to plummet in the future, across all ETF's I currently hold and this is because I believe the current economic situation is about as unstable as it has been is since the GFC or for those not initiated in fancy financial lingo the Great Fucking Cocking, sorry my mistake, its actually short for the Global Financial Crisis which I personally believe has actually never ended. I find it very investing that my investment in the Sustainability Leaders ETF (ETFI) has performed the worst out of my four current holdings. It has currently fallen by 12.32% since having made the purchase. I guess this says that roughly 12% of investors have stopped giving a shit about the earth. Its a real pity too, I mean what the hell happened to the Climate Emergency that we were all dealing with before Uncle Covid decided to come out and play? Did it just miraculously go away like we all wish Uncle Covid would? And what the hell happened to Earths Friend Greta? So many questions, so few answers... For those who do not fully understand what it is that I am doing with this Page, here is a quick update. 1 - I pick up cans and bottles from the side of the road. 2 - I sell the collected cans and bottles at the local dispensary. 3 - I save the cash I make until i have $50.00 or more. 4 - I invest said $50.00 into the stock market using the Commsec Pocket app. 5 - I watch as the turmoil of the stock market lays waste to my precious can fortune. From Trash to Cash to Wealth Stash! Today I managed to scrape up 37 cans and bottles! Its amazing and disappointing how many people continue to toss their waste bottles and cans out of their car windows while they are driving about. I found 12 of these units between home and work, all of which had been put there over night or while I was working. This stretch of road is only two kilometres in length, it is left for one day and I am still collecting roughly a dollar a day! It leads you to wonder, who the hell is raising these litter bugs and how many of these litter bugs are out there? For a bit of fun I put together a short video showing how easy it is to pick up bottles and cans from the side of the road and how easy it is to make money from them. Its not a glamorous life but the earth looks more glamorous once I am finished with it. 24/06/2020 - 37 cans and bottles collected - NYC This is a little late but I finally got around to investing last weeks can and bottle haul. Instead of investing the entire $53.40 I was able to buy 4 units of the Sustainability Leaders ETF - ETHI. This small investment cost me twenty cans ($2.00 AUD) to complete, pushing the value of the trade to $45.12.
Considering the recent behaviour of the markets I would be surprised to see any significant growth in this ETF any time soon. Who knows? The whole system might collapse at any given moment. Whatever the case, I can rest assured that all I am losing was something someone else tossed out the window. This is the beauty of investing rubbish. I now have three workers in the order. These are as follows. Sustainability Leaders, Aussie Top 200 and Tech Savvy. So far Tech Savvy is showing the best results having paid its own brokerage fees already. Tech Savvy is currently up by fourteen cents (one and half cans) but if you consider the brokerage fee it is actually up (21.5 cans). To put it plainly, Tech Savvy is beginning to multiply! "From Trash To Cash To Wealth Stash!" Call it what you want. Can harvesting or can mining. By participating in can cashing you will have the opportunity to relearn the value of everything by assessing everything relative to the value of cans. Crazy right?
For example, if you get paid $2.30 in interest from a bank account you could say that you have just been paid the equivalent of 23 cans. Better yet, when you relate this small quantity of money to how much work and time goes into collecting cans you will come to see the true value of both the money and the cans. The true recognition of value really sets in when you go to buy a can of coke to actually drink. It is at this point where you will come to realise that your about to spend the equivalent of two or three days can collecting in an instant. Circumstances such as these are almost enough to make you have second thoughts about the purchase in the first place. Occasions such as the one aforementioned make you realise the true value of the act of can harvesting itself. Having said that Can Harvesting will force you to start assessing everything in relation to the value of cans and you will find that your belt tightens a bit in response. This is the magic of can cashing. It skews your perspective in a way that makes you see value in everything. Nothing is worthless when you can compare it to the value of cans. From now here on out all the posts that were previously placed on the main Can Do page will now be posted in blog format right here! This will be far more manageable and should be far easier to follow along for the reader. As this is the case I have decided to add one giant post of all previous Can Do Journal entries into one post to get the ball rolling. After this 'largish' post I will continue by updating this blog daily with more bite sized pieces of information. So here it is, everything up to this day. Total uncashed = 229 units. Total value = $22.90 Tuesday 23rd 2020 - 76 cans and bottles collected - NYC Monday 22nd 2020 - 14 cans collected - NYC Sunday 21st 2020 -14 cans collected - NYC Saturday 20th 2020 - 16 cans collected - NYC Friday 19th 2020 - 50 cans collected - NYC Thursday 18th 2020 - 27 Cans Collected - NYC Wednesday 17th 2020 - 6 Cans Collected - NYC Tuesday 16th 2020. - 12 Cans Collected - NYC Monday 15th June 2020. - 9 Cans Collected - NYC While driving to and from work today I managed to pick up 9 cans. The market value of these cans is worth 90 cents. The total aluminium weight of these cans was approximately 134 grams of aluminium. In 2011 it was estimated that around 15 Kilowatts of electricity were consumed to make 1 kg of aluminium. This would indicate that by picking up 9 cans I have effectively retrieved an industrial material that took approximately 2 Kilowatts of electricity to make. The math is simple enough. Take 1 kilogram and convert it into grams (1000 grams). Now divide the 1000 grams into the energy it required to originally process the metal. So, 15 KW (energy consumed per kg) / 1000 (grams) = 0.015. Now multiply this value by the weight of aluminium you have collected (saved) and you will find the energy it took to create them. So, 0.015 x 134 grams = 2.01 KW. At today's current household electricity rate this 2.01 kilowatts of electricity is currently worth 53 cents. So by saving these cans I am also saving the amount of electricity that goes into making new cans, however this does not take into consideration of much energy it takes to reprocess the aluminum for reuse as new cans. I have recently read an article that mentioned that 7 kilowatts of electricity is saved for every pound of cans recycled, however this cannot be quite right as there is 2.2 pounds to a single kilogram. Following this logic this would indicate that 15.6 kilowatts of electricity is saved per kilogram of aluminium created yet it has previously been stated that it takes approximately 15 kilowatts to make 1 kg of aluminium in the first place. This would indicate that we have used surplus of energy by saving cans which is clearly not possible, at least not with the values we have been given. It may make sense if the energy used to discover and mine the bauxite is taken into consideration, along with the energy used to manufacture the cans themselves from the extracted aluminium. If these discovery, mining and manufacturing energy costs are taken into consideration this would increase the true energy cost of extracting aluminium from 15 Kilowatts per kg to something greater, a value I do not currently have access to. Whatever the case, saving cans is saving resources, there is no doubt of this. It has been said that with the energy it takes to make just one new aluminium can from bauxite ore, you can make 20 recycled cans. That's a significant energy saving. 1 aluminium can = 14.9 grams. 67 aluminium cans = 1 kg. 1 kg of aluminium takes 15 kilowatts of electricity to make. Market update. 14th Of June 2020. I have made two investments using the can money I have previously collected (not noted). After Monday’s new investment I will have three “workers” in the market. So far the previous two workers have lost value due to the market volatility caused by the current global pandemic. My two current *workers are in the Aussie Top 200 and Tech Savvy. My third $53.70 block will be invested into the sustainability leaders fund. I am giving serious thought into investing 100% of my investments into sustainability leaders as this would be far more fitting for the project. After all, I am picking up rubbish from the side of the road. In doing so I am saving resources, saving the planet and making cash. So I figure I might as well make better investment choices while I am at it. As soon as I get a good selling opportunity I believe I will put all my eggs into one basket. What do I have to lose? After all, this source of money was simply tossed out of car windows to begin with. It’s a wasteful world we live in, this I have no doubt about. *each $50.00 block I raise in cans will be placed into the market as a “worker”. From trash to cash to wealth stash. Sunday 14th June 2020.
- 13 cans collected - NYC Saturday 13th June 2020. - 5 cans collected - NYC Friday 12th June 2020. - 10 cans collected - NYC *NYC = Not yet cashed. I cashed out my can collection on Friday 12th June 2020. In total I collected approximately $30.00 worth of cans while working away on the side of the road. The remainder I had previously collected when driving to work or from personal consumption. $53.70 was the total I collected. This means I have earned another “worker” that I can place into the market. I have decided to invest this “can” money into the sustainability leaders fund when the market opens on Monday 15th of June. Thursday 11th June 2020. - 21 Cans Collected - Cashed. |
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