The Fascinating Ways the Global Recycling Industry Really Works

By Adam Minter

November 21, 2013  |  Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade [3] by Adam Minter. Copyright ©2013 by Adam Minter. Published by Bloomsbury Press. Reprinted with permission.

A single strand of burned-out Christmas tree lights weighs almost nothing in the hand. But a hay-bale-sized block? That weighs around 2,200 pounds, according to Raymond Li, the fresh-faced but steely general manager of Yong Chang Processing, a scrap-metal processor in the southern Chinese town of Shijiao.

He would know.

I am standing between him and three such bales, or 6,600 pounds of Christmas tree lights that Americans tossed into recycling bins, or dropped off at the Salvation Army, or sold to someone in a "We Buy Junk" truck. Eventually they found their way to a scrapyard that pressed them into a cube and shipped them off to Raymond Li's Christmas tree light recycling factory. Raymond is anxious to show me how it works.