Some Call It Recycling, Some Call It Scrapping, Sometimes It's Just Pawning

 

     We live in a town where politicians have routinely flushed millions down their favorite rat holes while a subculture doesn't throw away a damn thing!  Each day in Brownsville trash cans are gently overturned with the contents carefully separated into plastics, aluminum or the accidentally discarded coin.   Unpadlocked dumpsters beckon the divers who differentiate between Chinese and U.S. cardboard, thrill at the sight of the broken shopping cart or misplaced plastic milk crate.  None of this is even remotely connected with a commissioner's or mayor's green initiative, but all of it is survival based.
     Not long ago, I watched a man and woman pushing a worn shopping cart along 14th street.  Another shopping cart was turned upside down on top of the cart being pushed.  Other discarded metal pieces filled the basket of the cart.  All of this was headed to the scrap yard to be sold for a tiny fraction of H.E.B's replacement cost for one cart.   The scrap yards do ask questions, but only the legally required ones.  They have the incentive of buying cheap and selling higher so their survival is in play here too.  Shopping carts, manhole covers, air conditioning copper are the lifeblood of a system that starts near a trash can or dumpster and likely ends in a manufacturing country like China.
     Much of Brownsville's downtown retail is devoted to selling recycled goods.  Thousands of tons of used garments come trucked or trained in, baled into 100 lb. "pacas", sold retail in "ropas de segunda" or "ropa usadas".   Much of this comes from the excessive tonnage of items donated to the Goodwill, Salvation Army etc. that never makes it to an actual shelf.  Much of this is actually sold by the pound to valley companies.  These do a small retail business, depreciating the price per pound each day.  Some "usadas" put the garments in a huge "monton" for final sale at a reduced rate.  Finally, they can be sold to be ripped into rags.  Much of the tonnage, though, is simply categorized and shipped all over the world.  Visualize an eighty year old man in Chile wearing a "New Kids On The Block" cap or a construction worker in Brazil wearing a girl's high school volleyball shirt.  These men are oblivious to the writing on their garments.
     Other small stores in our downtown sell small appliances like coffee makers, juicers, ice crushers, radiant heaters, etc.  You will notice that all of the boxes have been carefully retaped.  These are return items from department stores up north and you buy at your own risk.  These stores may also have items they have bought on auction at pallet sales.  These come from store closings, abandoned storage units or even items that have been found to be unsafe.  It all finds its way here.
     I don't know whether Austin or Brownsville was the first to ban plastic bags, but I doubt any city can touch us on the thoroughness of our recycling.