Is Your Recycling Safe from Thieves?

Charley Lhasa's Flickr

The future used to be in plastics, but now it's cardboard. While you were in some office hustling to make an honest buck, a team of freewheeling thieves were raking in $1,000 a night intercepting cardboard left out for recycling... and recycling it themselves. Apparently, there's big money in those brown boxes, and now we're really kicking ourselves for not hoarding more. Yesterday Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced the arrest of eight men involved in the recycling ring; according to Brown they worked in two-man teams, stealing 1-ton bales of cardboard that companies had left out for private carters. That's unlawful, and the city has been trying to crack down on perpetrators for years. Speaking to reporters, Brown revealed that "for the price of renting a box van, each team could net close to $1,000 a night by bringing the stolen cardboard to a recyclable transfer station," Brown said. The value of recyclables is soaring these days, and cardboard's risen as high as $75 per ton! In June, an East Side grocery store manager was held-up at knife point for his cardboard, and cops later busted the thieves in a truck loaded with 37 bundles worth $5,550 when sold to recycling centers.

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By John Del Signore in News on September 9, 2009 11:00 AM

Comments [rss]

slippy

This is nothing new...I can remember this going on back in the early 90s. Back then, a slew of recycled newsprint mills came online, so there was a surge in demand and prices for old newsprint. People in trucks were snatching the bundles almost as soon as they hit the curb.

Uptownnyc makes a good point, though...NYS law allows private detectives (or the police) to go through your trash once you put it curbside, as it doesn't belong to you at that point, and so you have no expectation of privacy. I'm not sure how they bend that around to go after recycling scavengers, unless they argue that a contract between a recycling collector and a business means that ownership passes when the bale hits the curb.

pipsy

At least this stuff will actually make it to the recycling chain. The city hires all sorts of independent truckers and contracting firms. Depending on the price of oil that day or the tipping fees involved, most of our recycling set out on the curb goes straight to the landfill anyway. Just because you wash (which is a waste of water and unnecessary, by the way) and separate your recycling and put it out, that doesn't for a second mean it is actually being recycled.

This is no more offensive than people who make their living scavenging other items put out for trash, which is to say, it isn't. If there are little Chinese ladies in Chinatown making an industry out of sewing sleeves used to cover clothing while scavenging, then this should be seen as just another industry. To assume businesses are being paid for the cardboard is just that, an assumption.

NannyState

I agree. We're freaking out because something destined for the recyclers actually made it to the recyclers? I can think of ten million other things that get tossed and nobody's out there grabbing them to recycle. Scavengers are like healthy bacteria: they keep the shit from backing up.

ganghiscon

So should we also be angry with the people who go through everyone's bottles on recycling day to make a few bucks because we're all too lazy to go to a bottle redemption center ourselves?

wow 14th street

The same young African's that sell bootleg stuff on 28th St.& Broadway in mid-town used to be in this business

picking up cardboard from the 28th street area at

night stuffing the cardboard in a van

In reality though "Coach" bags and fake "Newports" must be more of a money maker as we have not seen them from where

we work at night in the old bootleg urrrr ,flower district.

Nyctini11

WOW another fine example of wasting tax payer $$ to bust people who are actually doing something positive & entrepenurial, maybe they should look into the tight knit criminals monopolizing the waste removal in our city, and leave people like this alone who are helping the environment and earning their keep, so to speak. NY gov't and it's "law" really is getting more pathetic by the day... unless, they too are the stuff your pocket payroll of these crime family waste mgmt companies too, OOOOOh that would be a shocker!

mellow_fellow

The bundles of cardboard getting stolen are destined for recycling as it is.

Nyctini11

Exactly. Do the buildings and stores getting any rebate from their waste removal companies, for the significant amounts the removal companies make by cashing in on this? a reduction in their monthly bills? Probably not, the waste removal people are just pissed someones getting their bribe money.

Atomische

Meanwhile ... get up early to watch recycling pickup and you'll see that your carefully washed and segregated "blue" recyclables (metal, glass and plastic) all get thoroughly compacted in the back of a regular garbage truck. There is NO WAY these materials can possibly be separated later.

Politburo

Recycling is picked up using the same type of truck as garbage. But it isn't being mixed with garbage. The compaction is mostly irrelevant, except for the glass.

Sorting materials after collection is a common practice in the industry. It is done part by machine and part by hand. This page describes some of the processes.

http://205.153.241.230/P2_Opportunity_Handbook/7_III_8.html

Brooklynbobby

I know. Really! My landlord makes such a big deal out of recycling and then you see it thrown in the same compactor. Ridiculous!

hotstepper

cardboard is for pussy thievin'. i head straight for the copper piping.

uptownnyc

Since when is anything left on the curb afforded any level of protection from growing legs?

cutlass

Agreed. This has victimless crime written all over it.

mellow_fellow

What are you talking about? No doubt the businesses that put out the cardboard for pickup are getting paid for them.

blondeinthecity

When I was a kid, we had a tin foil drive to raise money for new soccer fields or something, but when we were almost done, someone stole most of the tin foil we had collected. I remember wondering why anyone would want that much USED tin foil. Who would have thought that there is money in recycling?

gawzmta

> Who would have thought that there is money in recycling?

Uhh... anyone who has EVER seen a bum pushing a shopping cart full of cans down the street, maybe?