Mining the cities fo metals. They just built a new soccer stadium in Toronto, Canada, with lovely aluminum bleachers; before the stadium even opened, someone unbolted the seats and carried them away.
In Scotland, the "Great Drain Robbery" involves shipping manhole covers to China. In India, eight people have died, falling into open manholes after their covers were stolen.
In Baltimore, thieves cut down and carted away 136 aluminum lamp posts.
In California thieves can remove a platinum-filled catalytic converter in ninety seconds. Copper? Stealing it is a growth industry all over the world, as it hits four bucks a pound- two years ago it was a buck and a quarter.
While a manhole might fetch just $20, a single catalytic converter, boosted from an SUV, is a metals trifecta. It contains platinum, palladium, and rhodium worth $150. For professional thieves the big hauls, like truckloads of copper wire pilfered from construction sites, can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
U.S. scrap metal has grown into a $61 billion business - from $40 billion in 1995 - and the second-largest U.S. export to China last year. |
