An odd assortment of sheet metal clatters to the ground of the warehouse floor. A Bobcat rumbles toward the pile, scooping up the metal and crunching the pieces together into a dumpster.
At the Newark Recycling Center, that earsplitting noise sounds an awful lot like the “ca-ching” of a cash register to customers as they trade their cold, hard metal scraps for cold, hard cash.
Business at the recycling center is up more than 25 percent to an all time high, says Carmen Micucio, owner of the recycling center.
It has been helped along by an economic slowdown that has left many looking for extra sources of income, and skyrocketing scrap prices fueled by the bottomless demand of overseas developers, he says, and so there has never been a better time to unload unused metal objects.
A few years ago, a pound of copper wire might sell for $1. In today’s market, it is worth almost $3, he says. Aluminum soda cans that used to fetch 30 cents a pound are selling for more than twice as much. Aluminum is the most popular item Micucio collects -- he gathers more than 20,000 pounds of soda cans a month, mostly from residential customers.
Ten years ago, most of Micucio’s customers were commercial operations, but manufacturers have cut back on operations and builders are not as busy as they used to be, he says. But more homeowners are visiting the recycling center every week.
For many, recycling is the next stop after a failed yard sale, a botched home improvement project or a few weeks of disastrous music lessons, he says. Customers have brought in vases, lawn ornaments, bicycles, antique tractors, home gym equipment and even tubas.
High metal prices have completely changed the mindset of the public, Micucio says. Gone are the days where people would dump broken appliances in an abandoned parking lot or jack up junked cars onto a set of cinder blocks
“This is probably the cleanest you will ever find the United States as far as scrap metal lying around,” he says.
In fact, leaving metal lying around is a bad idea these days, because there are some less scrupulous recyclers that will steal anything that isn’t bolted down, he says. Micucio keeps his expensive scrap copper in a locked garage.
And although metal thefts are on the rise around town, most of the 240 customers who visit the scrap yard weekly are honest people looking to make a few extra dollars, he says.
There’s no point in wasting perfectly good scrap metal, says Wilmington resident Dave Cox, an employee of Benchmark Transmissions, as he drops off a pickup truck load of transmission parts to the recycling center.
Cox’s company fine-tooth combs everything leftover, and lately he’s been making a few trips a week to the recycling center. His latest load brought in $63 – not a bad haul for a pile of parts that would end up in a landfill otherwise, he says.
Roofer James Jacobs of Newark brought a load of copper, aluminum and tin. His haul nets $227, money he plans to reinvest into his business.
A little bit of scrap can go along way, says Elsmere resident Bobby Diemedio, pulling in with a pile of miscellaneous metal he found lying around the house. As he drops broken tools and old car parts into a pile of recyclables, he remarks that the clanking metal is music to his ears: each crash means more cash in the bank.
