At-Home Can-Crusher Review (original) (raw)

An At-Home Can Crusher Saved My Marriage

The can crusher at work.Photo: Leah Finnegan

The only thing my husband loves more than me is grape-flavored Spindrift seltzer. I was well aware of his predilection before we moved in together, but I was ill-prepared for the reality of the situation: a perpetual Colossus of Cans next to our recycling bin, threatening to topple at any moment. His grape-seltzer consumption was so voracious that our 29-liter recycling bin reached capacity every other day. Excess cans would start piling up around our apartment: on the kitchen counter, in our bedroom, near the bathroom sink, behind the couch, under my pillow. There was no escape. There was no peace.

Save getting an industrial-size bin or turning our living room into a can pit, there had to be a practical solution that would both ameliorate the problem and extinguish any smoldering passive-aggression between spouses. Upon hearing my dilemma, my friend presented a shockingly simple remedy: What if we just crushed the cans to make more room in the recycling? Okay, duh. All we needed to do this entire time was reduce the physical volume of the recycling, not go to couples therapy to work through what emptying the recycling meant. We began crushing the cans by hand, which greatly improved the overflow situation, but I knew the cans could be flattened even more. We could opt to stomp on them, sure, but that created its own workflow in having to mop up the dribs and drabs of seltzer that spurted on the floor.

So it became time to go beyond the power of man and invest in a simple, beautiful, formidable piece of machinery: a can crusher. The can crusher is a slab of metal with a little platform and a big lever. You mount the slab flush to the wall, put a can on the platform, and bring down the lever to crunch the can into a little puck. I chose this $20 one from Amazon. There are several things I love about the can crusher. It’s a tactile, primitive activity that encourages arm strength. It can crush things that hold up to 16 ounces, meaning you use it on a regular-size can, a tall boy, or a mini can, as well as plastic bottles. This particular can crusher purports to reduce your recycling load by 20 percent, but I’d wager it’s even more. Our recycling can go a week without being emptied now.

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It’s important to note that there’s some debate among municipal-recycling enthusiasts over whether it’s okay to crunch your can before it gets taken to its final resting place. Basically, it depends if your city uses single-stream recycling — in which paper, plastic, and aluminum are all dumped in the same bag — or multi-stream, in which you separate them. Check with your city to see if there are any local stipulations. New York City uses multi-stream and offers no such guidance when it comes to crushing cans, so I take that as tacit approval. Most of all, the can crusher is pretty fun. It sounds like a dinosaur taking a bite out of something and is great to use when you want to get some aggression out. My husband loves it. Sometimes I wake up to the sound of CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH! but then am lulled back into a peaceful sleep, knowing the flood of cans is under control.

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