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Most businesses that call themselves metal recyclers don\u2019t actually turn old junk into new metal. They are primarily collectors, aggregators. They process the junk, to varying degrees, and sort it into piles big enough to sell on down the chain to someone who can take it to the next stage. This is exactly what Steve does, on the scale of a single person. He gets some of his material for free from dumpsters but also buys a bit here and there. One day, he showed me a bale of wire that he\u2019d bought from a movie-set decorator who was retiring and needed to get rid of all the gear he\u2019d accumulated. He offered Steve the wire at a cut rate, which Steve accepted once the decorator cleaned off the colored tape stuck all over it. That left Steve to strip the rubber coating off with a box cutter. \u201cSo, he\u2019s doing some of the work, I\u2019m doing most of the work, but we\u2019re both gonna come away with something,\u201d Steve says without rancor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s rare that Steve finds enough pure metal to make it worthwhile to take it straight to the scrapyard. Most of what he finds can be made more valuable if he processes it\u2014putting in the effort to strip the wires, break off the brass valves, and otherwise sort and separate out the metals as much as he can by himself\u2014rather than selling the scrap as he found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n