You’ve got a bunch of beer, water and soda empties – bottles and beer cans! The usual trek is to the Schroon Tops, and hopefully find the Tomra machine working, and the line not too long.

But there’s now another option: The new Redemption Center located on the left as you head down the road to the Schroon Lake Marina. It’s run by Kevin O'Neil, who makes the entire process stress free. As we discovered, you’ll get your nickel back on each eligible container in about a tenth of the time it takes to feed the Tops machine.

Kevin came up with the concept after hitting a rough patch with his business, Okemo Log Homes in North Creek during the recession..

"I though what type of business could I do that holds up no matter what the economy is like? And giving money back is a pretty good way of doing it," Kevin told Schroon Laker.

He settled on Schroon after looking at numerous Townships. I was in the right place the right time." The feedback from the community has been "very positive."

So how does Kevin make money.? We discovered that bottle distributors pay him a couple of extra pennies to sort out where the bottles and cans came from.

That's because in New York, the burden of the bottle-return system falls on drink distributors. They are responsible for picking up the empty cans and bottles from redemption centers and grocery stores. But most of them hire third-party companies, like Kevin and Tomra to do that and to keep track of what got returned where.

Good Luck Kev!