During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s image shows a Shanghai scrap peddler who specializes in collecting old appliances that upwardly mobile residents don’t want, anymore.
This 2009 scene includes a printer that I purchased in 2004, and subsequently sold to the street corner recycling merchant who buys my paper, plastic, and cans, for roughly $2. She subsequently sold the printer to this gentleman – along with all of the broken fans, computers, DVD players, water coolers, and other appliances – for a substantial mark-up. It’s a gigantic business: in 2011, Chinese sold at least 3.5 million tons worth of home appliances (PCs, televisions, computer monitors, air-conditioners, washing machines, and refrigerators) to peddlers like this. What happens next is varied and mostly green. In this case, the peddler, after securing this newly acquired inventory to his motorcycle, took the devices to a workshop where they were examined for repair-ability. Those that could be fixed up, eventually made their way into China’s substantial re-use markets. Those that couldn’t be repaired might still be farmed for re-usable components; what remained, were sent into China’s thriving electronics recycling sector.
Previous ‘Scenes from a Junkyard Planet’ can be found here.