Industrial policy is a critical component of building the sustainable future we all want. One of the many ways residents and business owners can make an impact is through community programs.
Local scrap drives offer recycling and reuse education in ways that tie sustainability goals to every individual picking through their garage or basement. Creating a center of recycling excellence in your neighborhood can do wonders for your local school district and city infrastructure by ensuring the steel, aluminum and copper someone paid to throw away never makes it to a landfill.
Benefits of community-based metal recycling programs
You may be surprised how much money your municipality, neighborhood HOA or school fundraising committee can raise through a scrap drive, and municipalities often host them as a form of garbage service-fee collection. After all, it still costs money per-ton to take scrap metal to the dump.
Local community groups can flip this concept on its head and aggregate all that copper pipe, scrapyard debris, appliances and construction scrap into one pile to resell. Taking that expected cost center and turning it into fundraising cash can help buy that new playground slide or basketball court your kids have been begging for.
Profits from community scrap initiatives also keep it local. When you run a recycling program your neighbors take part in, you’re creating jobs. Someone has to organize the program and sort through the recyclables. Those are entry-level positions that pay wages, and they’ll likely be filled by residents living in the same zip code. When you keep processing local, you also keep the “multiplier effect” local. Every aluminum can or copper pipe residents redeem from the landfill is a few cents back into their own neighborhoods.
Community outreach: Investing in education and inclusion
Including everyone in your neighborhood scrap program is easy and fun when you focus on education. Most people don’t know what metals are in their home or how to differentiate between scrap metal types that pay top dollar and “filler” materials that don’t.
Hosting a “check your attic” event at the community center is a great way to teach residents where their trash can go and how to prepare it. Show up with some bins and magnets, let them sort through their own thrown-away treasures, and you’ll be amazed how many mom-and-pop franchises turn into lifelong recyclers when they discover the money in that old brass lamp or metal hidden away in their businesses and homes.
Local scrap programs are also great for getting kids interested in conserving resources. Lessons on how recycling aluminum consumes 95% less energy than creating new material from bauxite, or that landfilled glass takes over a million years to decompose, can be fascinating if you tell them as an exciting story. Letting kids earn money for their next skateboard by sorting scrap metal is a win-win for parents and local programs.
Many of the junior programs offered by recyclers like Action Metals have been around for decades. Make sure kids and adults know there are real, tangible resources sitting in their basement worth someone’s hard-earned money.
Tip | Spotting your Spot: Ferrous vs. Non-Ferrous Metals
If you’re hosting a community event, teach volunteers this simple trick to double the money you can collect: Just give every volunteer a small magnet. If it sticks to the metal, it’s considered ferrous and belongs in the pile with the steel cans. If it doesn’t stick, that’s non-ferrous metal (copper/aluminum/brass) that’s worth up to 10 times as much money per pound when properly sorted.
Scrap Incentives for Small Businesses
Many small businesses don’t have the resources or systems to process their own scrap. Community programs offer small businesses the opportunity to participate in a “hub-and-spoke” model.
Allowing local contractors to use your neighborhood as a central drop-off point for small loads of scrap means a local plumber or electrician doesn’t have to drive to the next county over to unload their excess. Fewer small trucks traveling longer distances also means less fuel used and pollution created.
Eliminating individual pickups for small-volume drop-offs allows community organizations to schedule a single collection truck to come through regularly. Not only is this easy for small business owners, it’s also extremely profitable for your program.
Getting Started | 5 Steps to Success
- Establish a Committee. Who is in charge? Do you want this to be a permanent fixture, with a trailer parked behind City Hall, or a one-time fundraiser? Your plan will differ wildly based on these questions.
- Connect with a Local Scrap Yard. Your best bet is to call a local metals processing facility and see if they’ll work with you. Prices go up and down just like with any commodity, so you’ll want to see who has the best rates the day you go. Some companies will also provide bins or pickup for large-volume community events.
- Secure a Location. You’ll want a central location accessible to all residents, that can be monitored. Loading recyclables onto a trailer strapped down in the middle of nowhere is great until someone goes scavenging, or dumps their heavy refrigerator.
- Sell Your Audience on the Concept. If you’re fundraising for the local fire department, say so! Post on Nextdoor or Facebook and let people know exactly what their aluminum cans are going toward.
- Sort At The Fence. Have multiple dedicated volunteers greet folks at your location and sort out copper, aluminum and steel as they unload. Taking the time to separate these items early will ensure you receive top dollar later.
Recycling Right: Benefits to the Planet
There are only so many mineable resources on this planet. Every can recycled means one less mine needed to harvest virgin ore. Recycling aluminum alone saves enough energy to power millions of homes per year. Multiply that by your neighborhood’s commitment to bump their recycling participation up by just 10%, and it’s easy to see how small actions can equal huge results.
Community programs can even keep dangerous toxins out of local landfills by properly disposing of white goods — large appliances. Refrigerators and air conditioners used to contain harmful refrigerants. Recycling companies have processes in place for safe extraction, keeping these toxins out of your groundwater.
Quiz: Could your Neighborhood Benefit from a Recycling Center?
- Could your neighborhood use some new playground equipment?
- Does your neighborhood junk pile up on weekends because bulky trash pick-up isn’t weekly?
- Do local painters, plumbers and electricians have a place to drop off that old scrap they’ve been hauling around for years?
If you answered yes to any of these, consider starting a community metal recycling program.
Call on Action Metals for Help With Your Recycling Drive
The single biggest issue with community-based scrap metal collections is dumping unacceptable materials. Make sure you have professionals sorting and managing your program as it goes. There’s no better way to turn off volunteers than a mountain of rusty scrap.
Action Metals has decades of experience managing Pop-Up drives and uses stainless steel cages with our company logo on them. Not only do they look great, we schedule multiple pickups per day to ensure your neighborhood never knows we’re there. Lastly, make sure you talk to your recycling partner about market trends. Just because you collect a load today doesn’t mean you have to sell it today. Metal prices fluctuate daily — waiting a few weeks could mean doubling your value.
Call or stop by Action Metals, your local scrap yard, to see how we can help you start a successful community program. We offer flat truck pricing no matter the volume, and all our prices are market-based and adjusted daily. We value transparency, so you can watch us weigh your trailer exactly as we would the big guys. Let’s work together to keep your local scrap programs running long into the future.
