Recycling is the BEST business opportunity for 2018

It seems that China won't take the USA's trash much longer. Although there are many ways to interpret that sentence, let's go with the literal interpretation.

It isn't surprising. Trash isn't a partisan issue - you don't have to be a Green liberal to know the evils of pollution; You can be a fiscal conservative to see the wasted money in all of this too. Both can agree that this is a problem. But with great problems, come great opportunities to profit from solving them.

I'm a proud Libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) and what I see with this trash problem is opportunity. HUGE opportunity. If you are an immigrant and you come to the USA (as I did), you see nothing but opportunity. Most of this is due to sheer laziness by the locals. One of the largest opportunities are in retail arbitrage.

If you walk into a donation store like Goodwill, Savers, Salvation Army, etc. they are stocked full of other people's trash. Not literal trash in this sense, but the addiction to retail spending means that eventually families can't store all the crap they buy. Whether that be clothing, home goods, electronics, etc. - it is all just overflowing in their garage. They find creative ways to acquire it and less creative ways to dispose of it. If it goes into the trash bin, then we create this problem. We have to dispose of that trash. It is highly likely that we will see increased costs for trash disposal as more and more of this waste has to be held domestically. We will also likely see moves at the front-line retail end to ban plastic products where not absolutely needed (ie. straws, bags at supermarkets, plastic drink bottles, etc.).

Huge opportunity. I mean if you ban straws, how does one drink? Easy. Sell them re-usable straws and make a killing. If you man plastic bags at supermarkets, how do shoppers shop? Easy. Sell them re-usable cloth bags for their groceries and make a killing. If you ban plastic drink bottles, how do you get water? Easy. Sell water vending machines and re-usable drink bottles and make a killing.

You get the point.

All through Phoenix (where I live) you find these water machines. For $1.50 you can get 5 gallons of water. For $6 you can get a re-usable 5 Gallon water bottle at Walmart. Do the math and compare the costs of having 4 Gallons of water (maybe get a nice water cooler dispenser on eBay for $50 or at a garage sale as well) and you are 100% self-sufficient for water. In a desert climate like we have, water is a life saver. So having a home supply is critical. But what a great business to be in, if they ban plastic water bottles. People will be forced to be better planners for water and think ahead a bit. Maybe they won't waste so much and we won't have our beaches filling up with those damn plastic water bottles. This is a HUGE win-win for everyone regardless of partisan politics.

But it just illustrates where HUGE money can be made. Think in terms of investing a bit of time to acquire things people no longer want, but they are polluting their garage. One of the most common things in the USA is that those that have too much stuff run out of real estate for it. So they rent storage units and fill them up with that junk. From time to time, they default on the payment and those storage units go up for auction. They even have highly successful TV shows about this (e.g. Storage Wars).

People don't realize just how easy it is to buy storage lockers online either. This website is a MUST SEE for storage lockers in your area:

https://www.storagetreasures.com/

You can bid online for storage lockers in your area that have been abandoned and it is surprising just how inexpensive it is to acquire them. You just need to have a plan in advance to identify value and dispose of trash. But if society is more inclined to avoid trash due to costs, this is just a better opportunity for those that resell unwanted junk. I mean there will be more defaults on storage lockers because not only can the person not store the stuff in their garage, but now they can't afford to dispose of the trash, so the reseller wins.

There is a growing community of resellers and many have YouTube channels. This is one of my favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/user/globalvoodoo

In particular, this is an interesting video of a storage unit that he discovered, although it will show the dark side of being someone willing to go in and dig for deals in other people's trash....

The thing is that I have purchased unwanted items (particularly vintage computers from the 1970s and 1980s as that is my passion) and sold them for massive gains. In 2017 I spent $100 on a ton of old Atari computer gear from a guy in Phoenix and turned that into over $4,000 in eBay sales. It didn't take that much effort. Some of the items are still on sale here:

https://www.ebay.com/str/mylesvintagecomputers

For me, it is a side hustle based on trying to keep the history of these great old computers, their books, software, peripherals, etc. alive. I don't want to see them end up in a landfill and I'm handy with a soldering iron, so it becomes a fun hobby for me. But hugely profitable.

You can be doing this too. The thing is that an investment in finding other people's junk is fun, and knowing what sells and for what money is just a matter of knowledge and learning. You can create an eBay store inexpensively and although you will probably lose 30% of the retail price in fees, PayPal costs, etc. you can still turn someone else's trash into massive profits, and keep that stuff out of the landfills.

Remember, China doesn't want our trash anymore. So you can PROFIT!!!!!!!