Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

by Adam Minter

Within a few years China was the biggest market by far for Alpert’s metals. But Alpert & Alpert wasn’t the only company to benefit: by 2000 China was the world’s biggest importer of scrap metal and paper. Low-cost labor and lax regulation played an important role in that shift, but they weren’t decisive factors by any means. After all, then as now there were places where labor is cheaper than in China, and environmental standards even lower. Indeed, if labor prices and environmental standards were the sole determinants for where scrap (or waste) goes, Sudan—with labor rates well under $1 per day—would be the world’s top scrap-metal importer. So why isn’t it? The most important reason is that Sudan doesn’t have many factories where scrap aluminum can be transformed into new aluminum and then remelted into new car radiators. Without such end markets—or the possibility of such end markets—there’s absolutely no reason for a Sudanese to import $60,000 containers of scrap metal. In fact, the lack of such buyers means that the relatively small quantity of scrap produced in Sudan is actually exported, with much of it going to India and China. But what about India? Why isn’t it, and not China, the leading importer of scrap metal from the United States? On the high end, India’s scrap laborers make perhaps $80 per month compared to the $250 per month that the cheapest of Chinese scrap laborers make. Equally important, India is home to a growing array of manufacturers in need of metal...