The New York 'canners' recycling discarded bottles to survive | AFP

On a Brooklyn street, Laurentino Marin doesn't stop to admire the Halloween decorations. Like every morning, the Mexican is busy filling a shopping cart with used cans and plastic bottles, which he will exchange for a few dollars. Marin, who is 80, is one of New York's estimated 10,000 "canners," mostly older migrants from Latin America and China who scrape a living sorting and recycling plastics and aluminum.
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[@olonzo2505]

Respect 💯💪

[@RandomShowerThoughts]

anything we can do to help?

[@stache297]

Keep drinking a cold one 🍺

[@armeddeafboi7276]

Dude if you have a green card move to Texas where it's warm and plenty of work for you.

[@muscleman125]

I truly respect this man who is willing to do this to make his money, but I can't help but doubt his claim there is no where else to work. He is in NYC, there's probably a hundred thousand open jobs at any given time. They might not be great jobs, but even working 4 hours a day at a fast food spot would earn him $60 a day before tax. I just can't see this being the only solution for him. He could be working half the hours and making close to double the income. If he has a green card, he shouldn't have any issue when it comes to applying for jobs.
So is there something more to his story that he didn't share? Or is he genuinely unaware of how inefficient this scheme is? I mean, he moved to America presumably to find better work, yet this is the only thing he thinks is possible for him? Also, he might wanna leave NYC if he is seeking a true career that earns enough to support a family. But if he is tied to NYC or just wants to make money, there's a billion spots in NYC where the staff is almost entirely Mexican or latino.
Obviously this was filmed a year ago so I hope he was able to take a step up, because this is just a bad idea from all angles. Door dash drivers make more in a day than he does in the city.

[@muscleman125]

Also the lady at the end saying she doesn't fully understand why people don't like canners; is it not incredibly obvious? You are digging through their garbage cans at their front door. Maybe it's a cultural difference, but in America it's seen not only as a weird thing to dig through someone's trash, it's also seen as sort of invasive, plus its just unsanitary. Again, it seems to me these canners don't even realize how much of a disservice they are doing to themselves by subjecting themselves to this type of work in the richest country on Earth.