Pulaski

Well, further advice was given, above, that scrap appliances are apparently "processed" in the US not generally shipped intact, but I know that other scrap materials are shipped internationally (though not necessarily from the US) by the container load, including aluminum drink cans and copper cables.

Pulaski

Ouch!

But if you like that sort of stuff, take a look at this: http://www.cargolaw.com/index-new.html. Unfortunately they seemed to stop updating it at the start of this year, but there's hours of fun to be had with all manner of transportation mishaps, including a good number of collapsed container stacks.

Yorkieabroad

Yes, I saw that. I can also see the viability of shipment of aluminum cans which can be compressed, and copper which presumably has a higher value per pound or cubic meter.

And now I'm off to google auto-shredders because they sound pretty cool!

GeoffM

Discovery/natgeo/history channel have had a doco or three on the subject. Monster machines or something. Sorry to be vague but it was a while ago, and I saw it in the UK!

Ash UK/US

I think I am beyond being shocked what people will take from the kerb.

About 4 years ago we decided to get rid of an old twin bed, mattress and box spring, we carried the box spring out and put a free sign on it then went back into the house to get the mattress as we were carrying it out a car pulled into our drive at the same time another car pulled into the neighbours drive, they literally started arguing on our drive over who was going to take the bed, I thought I was going to have to break a fight up

Earlier this year we finally replaced the mattress on our bed, that one was about 16 or 17 years old. That was taken by someone within the hour

Not to sound like a snob but honestly I think I would sleep on the floor before I would sleep on a mattress that had been picked up from the road side.

Cape Blue

You are correct - densified non-ferrous metals (Baled alu cans, baled copper wire, etc) all move in a containerized fashion back to asia - they are the ones making things and need the commodities.

Steel and plastics are at the lower end of the value range and often often need further processing before shipping - shredder-feed, often called "light iron" is mostly made up of cars that have any reusable bits removed and readily removable non-ferrous taken off (aluminum wheels, copper radiator etc) but to segregate the steel from carpet, from brake pipes, from bumpers etc needs a bulk-level process such as shredding.

Same with the white goods like cookers, washing machines and fridges,

It happens the same in Europe, but they also have pan-EU legislation to avoid the worst of the externalities in terms of pollution etc (80% of the CFCs in a fridge are not in the compressor/cooling circuit, but in the insulation foam - the EU requires this to be captured, the US doesn't).

In Europe we have the WEEE and ELV directives to drive further the recycling of the difficult bits of electrical/electronic and cars, and we have the TSF regs to prevent their shipment to developing countries where haz contaminants are not well-managed. In the US (who haven't ratified the Basle convention) is it still OK to export and is purely down to economics and not worrying about the polluting of developing countries.

As I mentioned before, even after recycling in the US and converting to a commodity-like status, the (now cleaned) materials are still often shipped to asia as that is where stuff is made.

Cape Blue

Occasionally they explode due to someone hiding a butane cyclinder in a car - quite an impressive explosion, although the neighbours don't always like it.

In London the plants are in Willesden and East Tilbury (with a small one in Erith), In California they are in Redwood City and Oakland docks, alone with Anaheim, Bakersfield and Long Beach.

A decent-sized plant will do 2,000 - 3,0000 tonnes per day of cars and white goods, either loading the resultant steel "ore" out by rail or by ship.

The problem material is a lot of the plastic which is hard to separate and is sometimes not recyclable anyway (seat foam or fridge foam is poly-urethane which is a thermo-set plastic and not realistically recyclable). A typical auto-shredder will landfill around 20% of what comes out.

RICH

Where I live, any old crap gets put out by the street and is gone in a day or 2.

Actual rubbish is a disgrace. No recycling at all, unless you pay a company to collect your plastics/ tins etc.

I put a bin liner of food waste/packaging and a carrier bag of cat litter out twice a week and I assume it gets buried or incinerated at the local place.

Michael

Recycling costs the city/state/customer money and it is cheaper to just dump it all into landfill. As you move further south towards Dixie, many cities/states tend to take the cheapest method.

Pulaski

NC made it a legal requirement a couple of years ago, so municipalities were forced to provide recycling, but it is not enforced so provision of recycling by private contractors is patchy, and billed additionally to the consumer.

Like the UK, part of the driver is cost of landfill, the local landfill has tripled its rates in less than ten years (not sure what the current rate is as I haven't been in a couple of years), so the cost-avoidance incentive to recycle is increasing fairly rapidly.

Jan Alaska

I tried to get onto a recycling scheme before I left Michigan but our township were worried paying for all those green boxes and collection might cut into their social fund so they veto'd it. 4 years later and I'm back, same township and still no recycling scheme :| Mi has a deposit thingie on bottles and cans so we can recycle those at what my son calls the 'hickabilly atm' at the grocery store but if we want to separate paper and plastics we have to take them to the dump and pay for the privilege even.

Alaska was even worse, they have no way of dealing with recycled goods as everything would have to be taken out by barge so they happily fill their landfills with the excuse that Alaska is a large state and there's plenty of room.

All of this in direct contrast to last years visit to the UK when we stayed at my mothers home, enforced recycling 4 different bins, one for paper and cardboard, one for plastics and metal, one for food and a small one for general trash. If you fail to recycle properly they get right on your case about it.

Bob

Our last town provided a orange crate type tub and would pick up fortnightly, but you could put as much out as you wanted.

Current town, we've got to use the dump but recycling is free. One time they were emptying one of the containers and the guy said to me to not worry about where I put the stuff as it's all just chucked out anyway

scrubbedexpat099

Freezers, Refrigerators have to be drained of freon, so not worth much.

Paper/Cardboard I burn.

Scrap metal goes to the recycler, can pay for my petrol to Denver.

Ichigo-chan

re-cycling is a first world problem!

it is a business scam!

Pulaski

That depends on whether you consider the $25-$30 I get for fridges to be "much". .... Which in any case is the same price/lb as all the other scrap iron, steel, and appliances.