Junkyard Planet

“Third-Best Option”

Americans throw out a lot of Christmas tree lights. Most US recyclers don’t care about extracting these lights’ low-value, low-grade copper, but Chinese buyers take them. A recycling plant in Shijiao shreds them and recovers the copper wire for resale. Some waste remains, and the leftover plastic insulation is hard to sell, though some of it ends up as slipper soles. Processors seldom burn it in the open, a practice that once created clouds of polluting smoke. If recyclers don’t extract copper commercially from consumer junk, miners must extract more of it from the ground. Environmental costs mount either way, but mining “virgin” metals is costlier.

The global recycling industry churns hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Recycling, a primary driver behind globalization, benefits from citizens’ green intentions as it relies on consumption. In this trade, profitability and “sustainability” go hand-in-hand – to a point.

Enlightenment and Waste

Small, local scrap merchants and traders used to buy America’s “recyclable” waste. Now, a few big corporations handle most of it. They truck your household recycling to their plants for sorting...