Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

by Adam Minter

In China, in India, and across Asia and Africa, the first thing that many an importer does when opening a container of freshly delivered scrap is seek out the bits that can be fixed up and resold rather than immediately remelted. After all, a hammer is worth more as a hammer than as a hunk of steel. But in countries where waste is divided into one of two categories—one that’s dropped into the recycling bin, and one that’s dropped into the trash bin—that distinction is mostly lost. So where’s the reuse bin? There is no reuse bin in your kitchen, of course, in societies where obsolescence is an obsession and many people simply can’t imagine owning an iPhone 4 in an iPhone 5 world. But that doesn’t mean the reuse bin doesn’t exist. Rather, it just happens to be located in the developing world, where old things that once belonged to Americans, Europeans, and Japanese are refurbished and pressed into new duty on a daily basis. Poverty may inspire the practice, but pragmatism has turned it into an industry.