THE BURGEONING EXPORT market in scrap metal has given a new twist to the old adage 'One man's trash is another man's treasure'. As reported in Monday's Gleaner, enterprising businessmen are now exporting about 20,000 tons of scrap annually which, at a price of $3,000 per ton, would constitute foreign exchange earnings of about US$1 million. This is relatively small on the scale of export earnings but an important part nonetheless.
For one thing, the industry is providing employment and earnings in a legitimate field of endeavour and at the same time is helping to rid the country of discarded material that would otherwise be left to rust and provide a haven for vermin and pests.
This export industry is, of course, not new to Jamaica. The sale of scrap was actually started in the 1950s by Mr. Irving 'Scrappy' Mindell, an expatriate entrepreneur. Currently, the main source of scrap is the National Solid Waste Management Authority's (NSWMA) Riverton landfill, but it does not appear that the material is being sold on a commercial basis by the NSWMA; rather, the scrap is being gathered up by a new generation of enterprising entrepreneurs who ship it in containers to China. One operator says he exports 10 container loads per week on which he makes a profit of between $300,000 and $500,000, or about $20 million per year.
China has now emerged as the dominant player in the world scrap market because of the strong demand for steel in that country. Approximately 10 million tons of scrap metal are imported into Shanghai annually from all over the globe.
Scrap is a term used to describe the recycling of metal, the raw material for which is abandoned motor vehicles, electrical equipment, old storage tanks and vats. Scrap is typically sold by weight; thus, an old car engine in the United States will fetch US$0.25 per pound while aluminium, of which the engine is mostly made, would sell for US$1.25. Scrap metals include iron, steel, aluminium, copper, tin, brass, lead and zinc. Junkyards therefore can be a dangerous source of environmental pollution and the scrap metal industry is tightly regulated in America and the U.K.
In the present Jamaican situation, Mr. Errol Greene, executive director of the NSWMA, has pointed to the danger of fires being set in the Riverton landfill when scrap dealers attempt to separate metals using welding torches. The bottom line seems to be that Jamaica's scrap industry needs to be properly regulated in accordance with international standards. Jamaican scrap dealers should be licensed and they should be obliged to pay a reasonable fee to the NSWMA for access to the Riverton landfill. If the export potential for scrap is as big as it appears to be, these fees would go a long way in offsetting some of the mounting expenses for maintaining the Riverton dump.
We note, too, that for years, people have scavenged in the Riverton dump among the discarded material, seeking to retrieve items for personal use or resale. Who knows, there may yet be other buried industries waiting to be unearthed.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
