I couldn’t spend a week down here without Bringing the Scrap to my readers. So, here it is, Scrap in Ayudhaya (roughly 45 minutes from Bangkok):
Thailand is Southeast Asia’s auto manufacturing hub and, as a result, there’s quite a bit of defective automobile scrap on the market down here, as well as a well-defined automobile waste stream that feeds mid-sized yards like this one (roughly 40 mt of aluminum auto scrap per month). The workers pictured here earn roughly US$12/day. They dismantle casings using hammers, hand-powered shears, and power-driven screwdrivers. All in all, a far more advanced processing situation than what you’d find in China or India. But labor is more expensive here (and the economy is much more developed), so it only makes sense that workers would be outfitted with real tools.
[Recommended soundtrack: the sublime Philippe Wynne at 3:20. Thanks for that, J.]