Olyns 4+

I used to take my cans and bottles to a recycling center where they measured by weight. They didn’t pay the full CRV, plus it was loud, smelly, dirty, and not close to home. When I discovered there was an Olyns cube in a nearby Safeway, I was curious and have it a try. So far it’s been generally quite easy. I love how it connects to PayPal and pays whenever you want to cash out. Sometimes there are technical difficulties with the machines but normally I can get 50 cans in pretty quickly. The biggest annoyance is that the machines fill up very quickly and I have to time my trips by checking the app. I wish there were more locations as well. For example there’s a Whole Foods, another Safeway, and several Asian markets in my town but only one Olyns in a Safeway.

The app is quite bare-bones and would benefit from the following features:
-ability to set a favorite/home location and get notifications when it’s empty, full, etc
-ability to send an SOS to their team when the machine freezes
-linking to your navigation app when you click on a location

The 50/day restriction is actually CA state law, not the fault of Olyns. It’s annoying, but at least my husband and I can each do 50/day to get through our backlog.

There are a few centers convenient for me to reach. I have to check ahead of time but I can usually find a time where I need to food shop anyways.

i just wasted 45 minutes and countless cans feeding a machine without any sort of warning that i could only do 50 containers per day. “50 CONTAINER LIMIT PER DAY” needs to be in giant bold letters SOMEWHERE. there was no marker of this information anywhere on the machine itself or in the app tutorial, it is only shown as a tiny notification at the top of your screen AFTER you’ve already hit the limit. you shouldn’t expect your customers to have their phone in one hand and a bottle in the other waiting to see when they hit their “limit” for the day. i, apparently carelessly, had my phone in my pocket and dumped away, little did i know i wasn’t going to be getting any of my moneys worth for the containers i deposited. i spent more than $2.50 in gas driving to the machine in the first place, i might as well have just stayed home. i will not be using this app anymore.