Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter
Do you know what happens to your old Christmas tree lights?
They are shipped in a container to a scrap-metal processor in southern China where using a system of extraction that is theoretically similar to the one used by 19thC American gold prospectors, the recovered wire is sold to copper mills and the wire insulation makes plastic slipper soles.
Who knew?
After reading Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter, you’ll know this and a host of other fun facts about the global scrap business. Minter’s book, although fascinating, is a bit TMI. The content is better suited for a series of New Yorker articles than a full fledged book. But even reading a few chapters will give you an entirely new perspective on your recycling bin.
One of Minter’s main points is that it is all about the money. Americans tend to think of recycling as a civic responsibility, but in reality if someone, somewhere can’t make a buck off your trash, it‘s destined for the landfill.
In one example, Minter joins Johnson Zeng, a Chinese scrap metal dealer, on a USA buying trip. When buying from Cash’s Scrap Metal & Iron in St. Louis, Johnson is not only attuned to the prices on the London metal exchange (which he checks several times a day on his Blackberry) but the micro markets in China for each type of metal embedded in discarded cable wires, as well as the cost of getting that scrap across the ocean. Johnson knows that if he can’t fill a forty -foot shipping container (40,000 pounds) at Cash’s, it’s not worth his time as a partial container is too expensive to ship from one scrap yard to the next. If all of these numbers work, Johnson buys some scrap. If not, he moves on to his next appointment.
The automobile industry is another example where money talks. Despite the fact that automobiles contain plenty of salvageable steel, until well into the middle of the 20th C, automobiles were routinely abandoned as the disassembly couldn’t be done profitably. Politicians and regulators rung their hands as abandoned cars piled up in streams, lakes, and fields across America. Ultimately private industry saved the day. Alton Newell of San Antonio invented a shredder that could that shred an entire car—profitably. Today there are Newell metal shredders crunching away all over the world. An abandoned car is a rare sight now.
As for your old cell phones and computers, there is money to be made here too. Your electronics can be reused, refurbished, or rebuilt and resold to a customer at one of the 1000s of used electronic markets across the globe. In a developing country, consumers are happy to have a flip phone or a workable early generation computer. For the electronics that can’t be repurposed, the precious metal and rare earth components can be extracted.
Recycling may be profitable, but it ain’t pretty. In the high volume, low margin world of recycling, the business goes to the regions in the world with the lowest paid workers and the loosest environmental standards. Minter’s first hand observations of recycling centers in China are hair raising. So that’s the bad news. The good news is the industry provides employment for millions who were previously engaged in sustenance farming, stimulates the local economy, and preserves natural resources.
It’s a complicated issue with political, economic, and environmental repercussions. Minter, a Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur based journalist who grew up in a Minneapolis scrap yard run by his father and beloved grandmother takes an evenhanded approach to the issue.
But there is one easy and obvious solution to the abundance of junk, as Adam concludes, “Stop buying so much crap in the first place.”
Not necessarily a book I recommend, but it was a thought provoking read.