Junkyard Planet (Book)

Junkyard Planet - Adam Minter

Snippets and Highlights

The global recycling industry turns over as much as $500 billion annually—roughly equal to the GDP of Norway—and employs more people than any other industry on the planet except agriculture.

There are few moral certainties here, but there is a guarantee: if what you toss into your recycling bin can be used in some way, the international scrap recycling business will manage to deliver it to the person or company who can do so most profitably.

In 2012, the United States recycled nearly 11.9 million cars (a down year, due to a weak economy and Americans holding on to their cars longer)...

...only fifty years ago, automobiles were almost impossible to recycle, and as a result millions of abandoned car bodies cluttered and polluted American cities and the U.S. countryside. Collectively, they formed one of the most serious environmental crises in the United States—and then, due to a scrapyard innovation, the problem was solved...

The price of shipping a pound of cans across the Rocky Mountains to a company that can remelt them into new cans is around 7.5 cents per pound—or roughly $3,000 for 40,000 pounds. But on the West Coast, at least, shipping to China via a giant cargo ship is much cheaper: around 1.5 cents per pound, according to Alan. In other words, that same 40,000 pounds can be shipped to Shanghai for $600—or $2,400 less than it costs to truck it over the Rockies.