One man's trash ...

For several weeks, a twisted muffler has been lying in the grass alongside the exit ramp connecting East River Mountain to Interstate 77 in Bland County. Day and night, people in cars whiz past the muffler, all oblivious to its worth.

Like most people, I’ve driven past metal castoffs many times and not given them a second look. That is until I read an article a few weeks ago about the competitive price scrap metal commands in the global marketplace.

That’s because of the Chinese, explains Leland Blankenship, owner of Bluefield Iron and Metal Company, one of the region’s largest scrap metal businesses. A couple years ago, the price of scrap metal was at its lowest, he says, but in January and February of 2004, it reached its highest price. China was responsible for this bust and boom. When the American dollar was strong, they flooded the U.S. with their scrap metal, selling it to U.S. steel mills at competitive prices. American scrap metal prices plummeted.

When the dollar weakened, the Chinese took the money they had made selling their scrap metal, and bought tons of our scrap metal to feed their own steel industry. American steel mills found it difficult to outbid the Chinese for this recycled metal that makes up 71 percent of new American steel. As a result, American scrap metal prices climbed to unprecedented highs. Scrap metal prices have peaked and declined some, Blankenship explains, but they are still two and half times above their lowest price.

Scrap metal is worth collecting and selling.

Iron and its spin-off, steel, sustain our high quality of life. Metal makes up the beds we sleep in, the houses we live in, the vehicles we drive, the jewelry we wear, the appliances we cook on and wash our clothes in. We need it to get our work done and depend on it to deliver our goods.

When its usefulness is spent, however, the once-precious metal becomes scrap metal and a big trash problem in rural America. Old cars, trucks, and tractors rust beside sheds with sagging tin roofs. School bus graveyards thrive in groves of trees. Abandoned trailers rot on weed-choked lots. Metal buckets and barrels, nails and shovels, swing sets and bicycles, discarded stoves and car parts lie in heaps at the edge of backyards.

In a region where the unemployment rate is high, you would that think that people would trade these metal eyesores for money. In a region known for creative entrepreneurs who make money selling ginseng and ramps, funnel cakes and quilts, and have mastered the art of flea market bartering, you would think they could see the value in collecting and selling metal litter to the scrap yards.

Some do, says Blankenship. He calls this the “peddler trade,” which makes up 30 percent of his business. Peddlers are the ones who pick up the mufflers and grills off the roadside and sell their junk cars as scrap. Instead of throwing their stoves, refrigerators, and bedsprings over a bank, they bring them to the business that’s the friend of the environment: the scrap metal yard.

Using “scrap metal” and “environmentally friendly” in the same sentence may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not, says Blankenship, who thinks his business is misunderstood. A scrap metal yard may not be a green space, but it’s not all dirt and chaos either. His business, located between the Bluestone River and the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks, is not pretty in the aesthetic sense. Metal objects heaped in hill-high piles await an appointment with the torch, shredder, or separator. Most of the objects sticking out of the piles are unrecognizable, but some are distinct, like an old green car perched atop its pile like a surreal Christmas tree topper.

“I buy cars with their tires on,” Blankenship says. “I dispose of them [tires], so that they don’t end up going over the hill.” He buys cars with their batteries, too, even though batteries rival used hypodermic needles as an environmental nuisance.

Since January, he has averaged paying $4,000 a day to peddlers. Some of them are clubs making money for their organizations, but most are people who “don’t have 401 k’s or bank accounts,” Blankenship says. “I pay them on-the-spot for their scrap metal. Then they go to the Pop Shop or Wal-Mart to spend the money.”

He sees his business not only benefiting the region’s environment, but also its economy. “I sell outside the community and use the money to buy scrap metal locally. People spend that money in the area.” He sees the scrap metal business as more of a friend to the vicinity than cleaner, prettier Wal-Mart that does the opposite: it buys outside and sells locally.

Blankenship also helps the Tazewell County Landfill meet a requirement of the Department Of Environmental Quality, which says that landfills must recycle 25 percent of their trash such as aluminum siding and gutters. Blankenship buys 24 of that 25 percent obligation.

When Blankenship looks at the mountain of twisted iron and steel with the broken car on top, he doesn’t see ugliness. He sees what the metal scraps will become after processing: copper for wires, steel for surgical equipment and railroad cars, aluminum for space ships, brass for plumbing, beams for bridges, schools, and hospitals, girders for a skyscraper, support bars for a roller coaster, iron for pumping in gyms, and a muffler for an SUV.

If that muffler falls off, though, it’s worth collecting and taking to a scrap yard for recycling.