I’ve been kicked out of local junkyards ½ dozen times or so now. It’s a tricky game of trying to reach the waste pile when no one is looking, and also seeing who is on duty in hopes of at least ensuring that the same person doesn’t experience the pattern of kicking you out multiple times. Perhaps they would get aggressive and even block you from dumping stuff if you’re kicked out too much.
Strictly speaking, it’s theft to take stuff from the junkyard. To be clear, the junkyards in my area do not sell parts. They just melt and refine the waste. The melt value is naturally less than the as-is value to someone who would repair or reuse.
IMO, the #rightToRepair movement needs to expand to give the public access to junk before it’s recycled or dumped into landfills.
Was in the solid waste sector for a number of years, eventually managing a landfill.
It.would.blow.your.mind. to know what all, fully functional shit lands in even a small town landfill or transfer station.
I fully agree with OP, there should be a way to salvage parts and materials before they’re either burned or buried.
Unfortunately, liability laws and possessive attitudes may make that a tough row to hoe.
Often it is someone being overly cautious about liability laws and not the actual liability laws that are the problem. Nobody wants the risk, even when it is vastly overblown.
I agree that right to repair needs to be expanded BUT it’s not necessarily the “stealing” part that keeps you out of junkyards - it’s the liability of rummaging through shit. If it was completely public, tons of people would get hurt (or worse)
Sometimes the staff kicks me out just for looking at the junk pile. Sometimes I encounter a balanced live-and-let-live worker who says I can pick through the junk on the edge of the pile, but cannot climb (due to injury risk). On another occasion, 3 workers approached me and I don’t recall what I said I was after, but they let me do my thing as they scattered (they did not want to be seen not enforcing the rules).
I agree liability is the real rationale but if they wanted to flex their muscle it’d likely just be a theft charge. In any case, a right to scrounge under the right to repair would naturally imply that the junk all be laid out at ground level for inspection before getting piled in a prohibited area.
Relevant:
The Post-Apocalyptic Inventor is a channel on YT that has a long series of repairing objects thrown onto the scrapyard called Repair-A-Thon.
I think those are places that sell scrap metal and other things, though, and not waste management type places. Not really familiar with Germany and what they have there.
I watch his stuff, though. Neat projects and it’s interesting to see what kind of stuff turns up out there. I wouldn’t consider many of them worth doing, myself. But it still kind of warms me to think that some nice old things get rescued and put to use.
When I was a kid, a buddy and I would pick through the scrap metal pile at the town dump for forging/blacksmithing material. Most of the guys working there would just kind of ignore us, but the old timer who ran the place would start yelling if he noticed and we’d have to scram. Nothing ever came of it, luckily. I would have explained that we were really bad at forging so most of the metal rods and lawnmower blades etc were going to end up back there eventually.
Things are a bit better where I am now. A friend volunteers at the dump and they’ve let him set aside TV’s to test and give away, and if he catches people when they drop off computers, he can ask if they want it to get reused, otherwise the dump’s secure destruction guarantee means he has to let it get sent for recycling. Unfortunately he doesn’t have time to pull hard drives or anything like that.
I wish for a society where that kind of reuse was the norm. Where items that work or can be fixed get set aside, organized, and cleaned up, and that that used stuff was people’s default when they need something. Reuse infrastructure on a huge, corporate/municipal scale. For now I just help him divert computers to people who can use them, and dig stuff out of corporate ewaste I have access to to give away.
Off-topic, but this post reminded me of the show Scrapheap Challenge (Junkyard Wars in the US) and how much I miss it.
Back on topic, I fully agree. The best we really have is that it’s not illegal (at least in my area) to pick up junk people have set out as trash before it’s picked up by the sanitation crew. It’s not uncommon for vacuum cleaners, lamps, or couches to disappear while the rest of your garbage is left behind for regular trash pickup.
Some household waste places over here have a good workaround. They put aside obvious reusable, or otherwise interesting scrap. If you want it, you can have it (generally for a small donation to their beer fund).
It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than nothing, and avoids the safety/liability issues.
It’s a good start but they really cannot anticipate what will be useful to people. They wouldn’t have obscure knowledge like really old hard drives still have a really strong magnet inside (which is useful for fishing in bodies of water for more junk :)). They would just say “surely no one wants this 2gb hard drive”…
Appliances and electronics in my area go to a non-profit who repairs them and distributes them to 2nd hand shops around town. In principle that’s quite good but I’ve seen them operate. A bulk of the stuff they get goes straight to a pile where it will be broken down and material melted. It would be nice if that pile of stuff they think is not worth repairing were freely accessible to the public.
Unfortunately, we are the exception, rather than the rule. If they hung on to HDDs they would likely only move a few. Most of those would later be met by complaints that it wouldn’t work in their computer, or lost data. Similar problems apply to most other goods.
As for the second point. It’s a balance, since you’d end up with someone injuring themselves on some sheet metal one day, and someone taking the lot to weigh in another.
I help out with a charity, and we get a LOT of junk. While we try and reuse what we can, we do dispose of a lot, just because there’s too much of it to store away till it’s needed.
I think my ideal world would have some kind of cataloguing stage where items are posted to solarpunk eBay. Perhaps they’re dropped off at local collection points and landfill swap shops, workers sort them and identify their condition (or maybe people provide some of that info when they drop their stuff off?). Perhaps some stuff that can’t be used locally is transported to regional distribution centers. People are able to search that catalog, place orders, and maybe have stuff shipped to those collection centers for pickup. Maybe combine the distribution centers with in-house workshops, or maybe private repair co-ops there’d could take in broken stuff as stock. Hopefully a strong culture of offering stuff up Buy Nothing -style would take some of the strain off that industry, but I could see almost any stage of that being pretty fulfilling work honestly
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