So which commodities are inflated and which one above is not eligible for recycling yet?
Urban economics:  Where does ordinary garbage fit in? The Secondary Materials Industry Primer: in the U.S.A. and in Connecticut



READ BETWEEN THE LINES
Speaking of recycling, in this case former politician who didn't last long in outgoing Governor's first administration:  https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Bridgeport-reins-in-scrap-metal-side-deals-13399999.php


"I DIDN'T KNOW" DEFENSE: MAYOR RECYCLES OLD EXCUSE...
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Ganim-plans-new-scrap-metal-policy-13467856.php

We note that no criticism is intended by About Town toward Mayor Ganim.



Fire at recycling facility speads to junkyard
https://www.theday.com/statenortheast-news/20181211/fire-at-windham-recycling-plant-spreads-to-junkyard



Scrapyard software, new laws designed to thwart metal thieves
By Karen Florin Day Staff Writer
Article published Jun 21, 2014

Area thieves hoping to cash in on higher metal prices have grown creative in recent years, stealing everything from a historic bronze monument in a Norwich cemetery to iron catch basin grates in Griswold, Lisbon and Plainfield.

Driven by drug addiction or just the desire for easy money, metal bandits have stripped the electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems from homes and have stolen street signs, manhole covers and guard rails.

Earlier this week, state police charged two men posing as telecommunications workers with stripping copper from a telecommunications tower in North Stonington that served as a hub for state police communications, including 911 calls and three cellphone companies. One of the men, 24-year-old Jeffery Joergensen of Chepachet, R.I., was carrying a hypodermic needle and a spoon when he was arrested, according to a police report. He is being held in lieu of $50,000 at the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center. His alleged accomplice, 25-year-old John Fahey of Pascoag, R.I., is free on a $25,000 bond, and both are due back in New London Superior Court on July 1...





HOW DID FIRE START?  HOW DOES SHREDDER WORK?
A fire in a car shredder Wednesday, March 28, 2012, LaJoie Auto Wrecking, 40 Meadow St. in Norwalk, Conn.

Norwalk junkyard fire knocked down
Tom Cleary, CT POST
Updated 09:29 p.m., Wednesday, March 28, 2012

NORWALK -- A fire in a car shredder sent smoke billowing Wednesday afternoon at a South Norwalk junkyard.  Norwalk Fire Department Deputy Chief Ed Prescott said the fire started shortly before 2 p.m. in the processing plant at LaJoie's Auto Wrecking, 40 Meadow St.

"We had a pretty good fire, with heavy smoke in the sky upon arrival," Prescott said. "Inside the building there were acetylene tanks, oxygen tanks and about 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Some of the bottles were compromised, so that was an issue we had to face..."




ZONING LAW
How does a "metalic Mount Trashmore" relate to Cobb's Mill Inn?  Both are "non-conforming" uses.

Judge rules against 'metallic Mount Trashmore'
Keila Torres Ocasio, CT POST
Updated 08:31 p.m., Monday, February 20, 2012

BRIDGEPORT -- Twenty years ago, Thomas H. Davis marched through his East End neighborhood to protest in what would be an eight-year battle to remove the illegal 40-foot dump known as "Mount Trashmore" from Central Avenue.

Now in his 90s, Davis, who walks with the help of a cane, is glad the fight to remove what a Superior Court judge has coined a "metallic Mount Trashmore" did not take nearly as long.

In a decision filed last week, Judge Dale Radcliffe dismissed a lawsuit filed by LaJoie's Scrap Metal against the city's Zoning Board of Appeals. In 2010, the board upheld a zoning enforcement officer's cease-and-desist order against the business for illegally selling and processing metals on its property at 291-301 Eagle St....


Missing Appliances Puzzle Sanitation Officials
NYTIMES
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
December 14, 2010

Over the last several months, 22,741 New Yorkers contacted the city’s Department of Sanitation and arranged for the pickup of refrigerators, air-conditioners and freezers. In more than 11,000 instances, the machines vanished before sanitation workers arrived in their white trucks to pick them up.

Who, then, is stealing the household appliances of New York City?...


Investigators Pursue Possible Connecticut Link To Failed Times Square Bombing
By DAVE ALTIMARI Hartford Courant
May 3, 2010

Investigators pursuing a possible Connecticut link to the failed bombing in Times Square have sought the digital images of at least one person who sources said is the last known owner of the license plate found on the vehicle used to carry the homemade bomb.

The Connecticut license plate found on the Nissan Pathfinder that contained a potentially lethal package of gasoline-filled cans, dozens of powerful firecrackers, three propane tanks, two alarm clocks, wires and a 70-pound metal gun box holding bags that could contain fertilizer belongs to a Ford F-150 truck registered in the Bridgeport area, sources said.

Sources said that investigators asked the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles for license images of the person or persons who owned that truck. They have traced the pickup to Kramer's Used Auto Parts Inc., a Stratford junkyard.



Government Will End Clunker Program Early
NYTIMES
By NICK BUNKLEY
August 21, 2009

DETROIT — The government will end its astoundingly popular “cash for clunkers” program on Monday, more than two months early, because it is already running out of money.

The sudden halt means new-car showrooms will likely see a flood of last-minute shoppers over the weekend. Dealers have until 8 p.m. Eastern time on Monday to submit the 13-page application to be reimbursed for the rebates they are giving out under the program.

Although the program has caused a welcome surge in demand for cars after months of dismal sales, some dealers will be glad to put it behind them because it has been plagued by confusion and processing delays.

The program, formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, gives consumers a credit of up to $4,500 toward the price of a new car or truck if they turn in an older vehicle with lower gas mileage. It has generated more than 457,000 sales since July 24, prompting General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and other automakers to increase factory output and call back some idled workers.

As of Thursday, the Transportation Department had repaid dealers just $145 million, or 7 percent of the $1.9 billion that they have requested, leaving many in a cash crunch and prompting some to pull out of the program already. The government is tripling the size of the work force assigned to handle the applications...


Scrap Metal Yards At Western Edge Of City Moving North
By TERESA M. PELHAM
Special to The Courant
November 25, 2008

More than a few undesirable sites mar the view along Hartford's highways, especially near the city line. But one ugly area on the west side has a shot a becoming a little more welcoming.

Scrap metal yards on Flatbush Avenue that for decades have been a landmark to drivers heading west on I-84 are moving, and the city is focusing on the area for future commercial and retail development. But the state's economy, now headed for a deeper slide than initially expected, will have to mount a recovery first.

The area will certainly be ready for redevelopment...

Illegal 'hulk haulers' emerge in Island County as price of metals rises
Whidbey News-Times (State of Washington)
Published: July 30, 2008 10:00 AM
Updated: July 30, 2008 10:38 AM

When journeying down Island County back roads a year ago, one might have discovered a handful of abandoned cars by the side of the road or parked on private lots. Not any more.

That old junker you thought was worth almost nothing is on average now worth about $300 to Puget Sound scrap processors.

Lois Young, who is in charge of marketing and recycling services at Skagit River Steel and Recycling in Burlington, said that the shortage of metals can be attributed to global supply and demand. The relatively nascent Chinese industrial revolution and growth in South America’s latest steel-seeker, Brazil, has resulted in a significant per-ton increase.

According to Young, iron is now fetching about $300 to $500 per ton on the market.

“It has gone up a couple hundred dollars over the last year per ton,” said Young.

This staggering increase is translating into a thriving market for legitimate, but more prevalently, illegitimate hulk haulers and unscrupulous scrap processors who have made some Puget Sound counties home to illegal trafficking...


Metal Objects Are Targets Of Thefts
By ANN MARIE SOMMA | Courant Staff Writer
July 7, 2008
Thieves have stolen everything from empty beer kegs and catalytic converters to aluminum Little League bleachers and fountain fixtures — basically anything made of metal that can be grabbed and carted off to scrap metal yards.

Parishioners worshipping on Easter weekend at the All Hallows Church in Plainfield learned first-hand just how brazen metal thieves can be: A member of the congregation heard a noise, looked outside and saw a man making off with a 30-foot length of copper gutter pipe that he'd taken from a tower in front of the church.

"These people don't have any respect of the sacred. This building is special, it is the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus," said Wojciech Kowalski, the pastor of All Hallows Church.

The price of copper, aluminum and bronze have risen so high that police departments in the state have seen thieves cut off catalytic converters from cars and rip off vacant homes for copper pipes...


In the Metal Recycling Business, It’s Loud, Dirty and Suddenly Lucrative
NYTIMES
By ANN FARMER
Published: June 27, 2008

Bob Rommeney steered his flatbed truck into a scrap-metal recycling plant in Brooklyn and unloaded two battered cars that had been wrecked days earlier at Riverhead Raceway on Long Island.

Within hours, the discarded vehicles would have their wheels removed, their fluids drained and their bodies crushed into 3-by-4-foot squares. Mr. Rommeney, 54, a retired city sanitation worker, would return home to Maspeth, Queens, about $400 richer.

“It’s worth it to come here and scrap the cars,” he said the other day, waiting his turn in the yard to drive his flatbed onto a large scale. There, workers compared its weight with what it weighed when it arrived at the yard, which is owned by A.R.C. Metal Recycling, to determine how much he should be paid. “Three years ago, I would have gotten about $50 a car,” Mr. Rommeney said. “The money went up.”

It is a very good time for anyone involved in the scrap-metal business. People who collect scrap metal and take it to recycling facilities are getting higher rates for their deliveries.

In turn, metal-recycling companies are selling more scrap metal, particularly to customers in China, India and other developing nations, who are paying record prices. A.R.C. Metal Recycling has recently been selling its scrap steel for close to $500 a ton, more than double the price it received a year ago...



Oil speculation could wipe out pensions; Investments in crude oil are producing phenomenal results now, but an about-face holds the potential for disaster 
DAY
By Matthew Perrone    
Published on 6/28/2008 
          
Washington - All those speculators getting the blame for driving up the price of oil these days - just who are they? For part of the answer, look in the mirror.

The retirement savings of workers across the country, entrusted to pension fund managers, are being plowed into one of the few investments that has delivered phenomenal returns in recent years.  For decades, futures contracts were mostly traded by commodity producers and the people who used the actual products, such as crude oil, corn and soybeans. Agreeing to a price today for a commodity to be delivered in, say, two months is a way to smooth out price fluctuations for those supplies...


”A pension fund is supposed to be investing money in secure, stable investments for the benefit of the people whose money they are investing,” said Dan Lippe, an energy analyst at Houston-based Petral Consulting Inc. “When we hit that wall and things start falling, they will fall very fast, and the pension funds that invested in commodities will see a tremendous loss of value...”



For the Digitally Deceased, a Profitable Graveyard
NYTIMES
By JOHN HANC
November 13, 2008

HARD DRIVES, printers, fax machines and cellphones move along a conveyor belt at the rate of six tons an hour into the gaping maw of a 16-foot-tall, 60-foot-long shredder at e-Scrap Destruction, in Islandia, N.Y...

“I saw computer recycling as the next big wave,” said Mr. Feinstein, 37, who previously ran a paper-shredding business with his father, Bob. “We did some research and found that not too many companies were doing it the right way.”

Finding ways to dispose of America’s increasingly large stream of e-waste is difficult: an estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses every day. In a 2006 report, the International Association of Electronics Recyclers estimated that about 400 million pieces of e-waste are scrapped each year. And while some prominent manufacturers, like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have agreed to recycle their own equipment, such programs have so far made only a modest difference.

“It’s a huge problem, and it’s growing,” said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the San Francisco-based Electronics TakeBack Coalition, a group that promotes recycling of consumer electronics. “Think about how many gadgets you have now and didn’t have five years ago. We’re buying more and more things with shorter and shorter life spans...”



Trash has crashed.
Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up
NYTIMES
By MATT RICHTEL and KATE GALBRAITH
December 8, 2008

The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.

Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.

“It’s awful,” said Briana Sternberg, education and outreach coordinator for Sedona Recycles, a nonprofit group in Arizona that recently stopped taking certain types of cardboard, like old cereal, rice and pasta boxes. There is no market for these, and the organization’s quarter-acre yard is already packed fence to fence.

“Either it goes to landfill or it begins to cost us money,” Ms. Sternberg said...



Garbage and recycling lend new meaning to political slogan!!!

Abandon ship!
Another way of expressing this opinion?

Up in Smoke:  Harrisburg’s waste to energy to bankruptcy saga
Weekly Standard
Jonathan V. Last
October 31, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 07

On October 12, Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy. The move took most of America by surprise—​headlines on CNN and the Drudge Report played the story as breaking news. It was not. Harrisburg’s failure has been so long in the offing that last June the state legislature passed a law forbidding the city from declaring bankruptcy until July 2012. (The city will challenge this law in court.) People in Pennsylvania have been waiting for Harrisburg to go broke for a long time.

Harrisburg’s financial ruin has long been assured, but not for any of the usual reasons. There are no runaway pensions eating up the budget or dirty officials embezzling funds. The city’s tax base has not hollowed out like Detroit’s. Instead, Harrisburg was doomed by a single project: a waste-to-energy incinerator that has left a city  with an annual budget of $55 million some $280 million in debt. That’s a debt load of $6,000 for each of the 49,500 men, women, and children in town, an amount so staggering it was impossible for the city to sustain it. (The saga has been chronicled by John Luciew of the local Patriot Times for several years in a tour de force of reportage.)

Harrisburg’s runaway incinerator is a compendium of failure​—​a combination of fashion-based policy, bad decisions by a local government, and schizophrenic federal mandates...