Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

by Adam Minter

At past events the lobby, and the lobby bar, were jammed with buyers and sellers trading business cards and prices. Away from the hotel and the conference hall, Chinese scrap traders splurged on outrageously expensive and elaborate meals (I once attended a banquet that featured a large cooked alligator in the middle of the table) and fine-boned prostitutes, all in hope of convincing a handful of foreign scrap suppliers that they—and nobody else—should be the ones to buy their scrap. But the financial crisis put an abrupt end to the fun. In 2008, unlike, say, 2007, there were no Taiwanese scrap brokers in the lobby whispering “Do you want a girl?” to any male with a white face, a delegate badge, and a shipping container of old washing machine motors to sell;