Spilling Milk Into Cash

From gwendally's journal:

The operations manager at a grocery store told me a story last night.

That store carries several varieties of milk, including local organic half gallons in glass bottles. It's fairly expensive, as milk goes, about $6 including the $2 bottle redemption fee attached to the glass bottles. (I'm not fond of the glass bottles because they're heavy to carry and don't fit in my refrigerator door very well, but people like them because they cut down on waste and don't use fossil fuels and appear prestigious.)

But what's happening is that people are coming in and purchasing those glass bottles of milk with food stamps. Food stamp laws requires that you not discriminate about what people can buy with them: they want the expensive milk, they're entitled to buy it.

Then they walk outside and dump the milk and come back in to cash in the bottle redemption, leaving with $2 in cash per bottle in their pocket.

via Joe Sherlock's The View Through The Windshield