When i found out my local dump was going to charge $100 to recycle a dryer that died, i said no thank you. I took it apart in my garage and cut up the larger pieces, it all fit into my trash barrel unit. Cost me no extra at all
We have a big open dumpster at our transfer station for any steel scrap metal. People throw dryers, washing machines and anything else made out of steel including tin cans in it all the time.
Scrap steel/tin has a value. Current price is about $.08/lb for tin/light Iron
https://www.arrowscrap.com/prices
I do that all the time. It’s amazing the stuff you can get rid of by cutting it up and feeding it into the normal trash.
I was involved with my former towns transfer station. The number one thing we TRIED to get our residents to NOT throw in their trash was their aluminum cans. It takes a lot of aluminum cans to fill up a 25’ dumpster. Especially if you have a compactor. Aluminum Cans are currently worth $.50/pound.
At one point they were well over $1/pound. So, a 25’ compacted dumpster was worth over $25000. Plus, the Anheauser Busch container recovery plant was less than 10 miles away. So, it did not cost much to truck it over there.
It was a big money maker for our town. We basically ran the transfer station with what we made off of selling Aluminum.
The next most profitable thing was scrap steel/tin/cast iron. This also was a money maker, but not even close to aluminum.
Cardboard had a value too. However, you had to truck it up to the paper mill four hours away. So, it was about a break even with the trucking cost.
However, cardboard is the largest volume of any single item in the current trash stream.
Plastics IF you separated them out could be sold. The trucking was more than you could sell them for BUT it was not as expensive as having to haul mixed trash away.
You had to pay to get someone to take your trash.
The most expensive thing to get rid of was construction debris. Stuff like pressure treated lumber and drywall.
It had to go to a special landfill. So, we CHARGED $.10/pound to dispose of that in a special dumpster.