Taking scrap metal to the recyclers.

[vernon]

Yes it is. But I think things left on drives are considered fair game (as per postman's dishwasher above) so you have to exert constant vigilance!

Does that include the gates at the end of the drive that some thieving scrotes nicked from my house?

 

[RedRider]

I know this bloke who survived seven years sleeping rough in a cemetary on the proceeds of scrap. Ten kilos a day provided for pies, socks, cider, chocolate and tobacco. Not the healthiest lifestyle but he's around to tell the tale.

 

[Accy cyclist]

I wouldn't go near the scrap yard a few hundred yards from where i live! The owner's doing 7 years jail for all sorts of violence, intimidation etc,yet he still runs his organisation from inside according to reports. Not only that but the last time i passed on my bike i was confronted by a Japanese Akita and a Doberman belonging to the owner's family. The horrible things stalked and nipped me as i walked slowly(back to the wall)to safety!

 

[slowmotion]

I think it all depends on global metal prices. When the Chinese economy was really roaring about ten years ago, dodgy flat-bed Transits were stripping rows of streets of their Victorian coal-hole pavement hatches...just cast iron. It made economic sense to them. A few years earlier I delivered eight copper hot water cylinders to a giant scrap site in Bedford. The scene of eager vans that were queuing for cash with all kinds of iffy scrap put Mad Max to shame. It was a fun couple of hours.

 

[nickyboy]

I'm struggling to see the charm in watching people selling stuff that they have stolen from someone else

 

[Globalti]

When I am travelling around Africa and especially Nigeria, there are two very obvious sources of metals and I'm amazed that nobody bothers collecting them: the first is that the equivalent of several years' GNP is hanging in tatters from all the telegraph poles in the form of massive tangles of copper telephone cable, now disused. Before cell phones arrived, the telephone was a nightmare and NITEL used to just come and string a new cable to your house or office (once you'd paid the special "service charge" and the hire of the ladder and bought the wire, both of which had actually been stolen from NITEL, obviously) adding more and more weight until sometimes the poles, weakened by termites, would just fall over wiping out the entire district.

The second is a bit less obvious: when you are stuck in traffic and gazing vacantly out of the car window and your eye falls to the road surface you realise that the road is peppered with millions of metal bits that have dropped off cars and trucks, been squashed into the hot tarmac and then polished by millions of tyres passing over them, creating a rather attractive and completely random artwork of shiny shapes, most unidentifiable, gleaming from the black tarmac. If somebody just went round with a big magnet and a digging tool they could collect thousands of tons of metal from very short stretches of road. Labour being Africa's cheapest commodity, I'm surprised that nobody has thought to collect these metals and export them to China. I guess the certainty of being killed by the same traffic is what puts people off both sources.

 

[Paulus]

I left my old fridge/freezer out in the driveway last night, This morning it was on it's side and just the motor had been taken. I still have the carcase to dispose of.