I've always pondered if my local bottle depot were providing a proper count.

This is my findings for 2 bottle depots I've dealt with for building this thread. Please post your experience from your local bottle depot so others don't get ripped off.

Counted my inventory to date.



The price structure according to Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation's web site http://www.abcrc.com/cfm/index.cfm would pay 1 litre and under $0.10 each and 1 litre and over $0.25 each.

My inventory count for this experiment:

13 @ $0.25 = $3.25
80 @ $0.10 = $8.00
TOTAL revenue = $11.25

Correction:Then I divided evenly among 2 garbage bags labeled "A" and "B", there was an extra over 1 litre bottle (of 13), so I just randomly place it one of the bags with my eyes closed.



First stop, Trail Bottle Depot @ 8499 Horton Road SW. good location, friendly staff. They used some sort of weird number system, you're not waiting for your number to be called upon, however, you take a number and find an avaliable but professionally well divided marked spot and wait with your pool of bottles until a service representative is avaliable to assist you; by order of number tags.





They do have awesome posters and attractions hanging all over the walls, something to wander your eyes away from all the bottles. As well as a fully stacked magazine rack for your recycling enjoyment.


Result: $5.75




Next stop, Fish Creek Bottle Depot Ltd. @ 15216 Shaw Road SE. One of my favorite spots, been there since the day it opened and built.



Not much of a looker, but gets the job done. Plain and simple, lots of parking surrounding the building. Close by Subway, McDonald's, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, what perfect way to spend that hard earned bottle dollar.

Result: $5.50



Which brings my day's income to $11.25, exactly as calculated.

I have complete faith with these 2 bottle depots and will definitely recommend any urban treasure hunters to take their business to them.

Another incredibly helpful post! I just moved down in the SW, and was actually wondering about bottle depots. Thanks man!

ahah definatly great thread and a good idea i always wondered if i was gitting ripped off someone should check the one near manning i think its on 32nd street

tomco your random as fuck, what a funny review lol...
ohhh bottle depot's

i've seen reviews and i've seen reviews
but coop chicken and bottle depots

You got my vote

great review... are those 4l milk jugs... i thought those aren't being taken till the new year

Glad to hear that you like fish creek, My business partner owns that place. You may have seen him. Hes the short fat guy lol ussally standing around at the till.

I think the one with a green lid is a juice jug and blue lid is water. And no as of yet we dont take milk jugs

I like the urban treasure hunter bit.

Yea it's a good location and pretty well kept. So are you guys the 2nd owners of the operation? Think it was built 1996, I was still riding the yellow school bus.

Tomco for prez!

what about the extra $0.10 bottle you placed in one of the bags - didn't that get missed somewhere (and I still don't understand your rationale for doing that)?

the worst bottle depot in terms of speed is the one near U of C. you know, the one that hires mentally challenged or disabled employees. I'm not ragging on anyone's intellect at all, but fuck that place can take an hour just to get like 3 people through.

these days i just leave all of my bottles out by the trash for the bums to pick up. and I go through a lot of bottles. someone has to help them out with their crack addiction, right? better than them smashing out my car window for the $6 in change in my ashtray.

Sorry, I fucked up on that...

It was 80 of $0.10 so that divided evenly 40/bag

And 13 of $0.25 so 6 each, with 1 left out... and I just placed it in one of the 2 bags... and apparently it went to the first place, totaling $5.75, the second place $5.50, which is consistent with the extra $0.25 or 1 over 1 Litre bottle.

Mmm Lemon Tea and Orangina.

I go to one on 37st SW and have done quick count. I think I have been short changed there before but maybe next time I will do a more exact count.

alright, gotcha! (you are such a nerd hahahaha)

yes, second

Good to know there are a couple honest locations around town. Last time I went to the VRRI bottle depot with over $35 worth of bottles. The whole time we were there my wife was nagging me that we should donate to them, they are a good organization and so on. When we finish up and go to get our money, they tell us it was $18 worth of bottles. I am 100% sure it was at the LEAST, $35 worth, more like $40. I didn't make a big stink about it, but there's my donation, and since they feel it necessary to steal from their customers, I will never donate to those guys in the future.

Out in Vernon I have never had a dishonest bottle depot (well, there were only 2 in the whole town anyways...) so I had almost forgotten this stuff happens until I went to VRRI. Big thumbs down for those losers.

Anybody know an honest bottle depot in the central NW?

this thread =

tomco, must have been slow at the office...

Hey another thing I noticed (I usually only go to depots once in 8-10 months), but both places don't remove bottle caps anymore, is it not required by the processing plants anymore or something? (I don't know the answer)

Which is freakin' awesome because it's just pure counting instead of losing count while un-screwing caps, and consumers don't have to look like dinks standing around not helping... I'm one of those guys that pretends to help a bit, only grabbing the super clean ones, unscrew 1 to their 20 while pretending I got a cell call.

The only bottle depot i can say will go out of their way to rip you off is the one in Inglewood right next to the mechanics, i had to go there once to help the Gf's little sister take bottles back and we easily had over 100 dollars in there and we got 56 dollars back....if that wasn’t enough to push me over the edge they did the ol' look at you then say something in another language to the person to their right then laugh for awhile. Makes me want to jump over the counter and kick a bottle up their ass
So in closing whatever you do avoid the Inglewood bottle depot.