If you spend time in the Chinese countryside you’ll eventually run into factories filled with entire farming villages now displaced by industrial development. I’m not one to romanticize an agrarian lifestyle that I wouldn’t to live, myself, but I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit that I find the disconnect from the land – and…
All posts in Scrap
Why are 40,000 containers of scrap metal idling in Hong Kong and Guangzhou?
Unless you trade in non-ferrous scrap metals, you probably weren’t aware that this was a problem. But let me assure you that it is a big problem, indeed, and if you have any interest in how business works in south China, the origins of this mess should interest you. First, a bit of background. Ever…
The couple that granulates Thai fruit baskets together …
I spent the weekend in a part of Northern China that I can’t reveal, but suffice it to say that they recycle a whole lot of plastic there. Anyway, a quick photo to share before I get back to multiple looming deadlines. When I first came across this couple in the early afternoon the pile…
My gift to investigative reporters and environmental activists everywhere (but especially in Portland, Oregon)
Hardly a season passes without some esteemed media organization running a story on the export of e-wastes from the developed world to south China (Guiyu, in particular). 60 Minutes did the last major one (my thoughts here), and PBS’s Frontline is in the midst of producing the next one. I’ll spare my readers – and…
The Limits of Recycling
I’ve spent the better part of a week in Japan, now, visiting some of the most advanced recycling facilities in the world. In some ways, it’s been exhilarating: Japan’s strict regulatory structure ensures that the most difficult wastes – say, automobiles – are recycled as far as current technology and economics allow. At the same…
Pachinko Scrap!
Just when I think I’ve seen everything, somebody takes me to a factory devoted to the recycling of pachinko machines. In the foothills beneath Mount Fuji. For now, I’m going to have to hold off on saying – and showing – much more than that. Merely keep in mind that the most valuable disassembled components…
Shredded on the 4th of June.
A few weeks ago one of this blog’s regular readers who happens to work in the scrap metal industry mentioned that I had never – not once! – posted images of a metal shredder to Shanghai Scrap. So, in the spirit of good will to all scrap metal dealers, I promised him that I would…
Very hot scrap.
Almost exactly two years ago I attended a steel industry conference in Dalian memorable for two things: the sushi buffet, and a manic sales representative for a radiation detection company. Throughout the three days that I spent there, I watched as this gentleman approached every attendee – sometimes more than once – with a brochure…
Yes, we have no scrap, pt. III
As noted in previous posts, Shanghai Scrap is the lucky beneficiary of misdirected scrap metal, paper, and plastic inquiries from around the world. As also noted in previous posts, I reserve the right to re-print these sometimes ridiculous, but always interesting, inquiries (with the solicitor’s name, if the email is clearly identifiable as scrap spam).…
Even (alleged) state-sponsored kidnappers should hire PR consultants, sometimes.
Over the last six months, countless media outlets have run stories on China’s role as the world’s biggest recycler, and thus its role in the Fall 2008 collapse of the international scrap recycling markets. Of those stories, a very high percentage mentioned the alleged, October 2008 kidnapping of a British scrap trader by a state-owned…