We Recycle Everything.

It was a little unusual for a meeting of going on forty men and a couple of women to be held at a scrapyard, but naytheless they were there at Connaught’s Yard. The incongruously pretty and well dressed woman in four inch heels who opened the meeting was maybe in her early or middle twenties and despite her apparent ease with her anomalous surroundings she looked to be seriously out of place.

“Good morning, and welcome to this inaugural meeting of the board and regular customers of WRE limited. For those of you who don’t know I’m Imanicipita, one of Harry Connaught’s granddaughters. I admit it is a little arrogant at the moment to call the company ‘We Recycle Everything’ because we shall not be there for a year or two, but I assure you we shall be there soon. However, to the business of why you have been invited here. Perhaps most importantly to most of you we shall as of now be paying for all scrap aluminium on the basis of its aluminium content which we can almost instantly determine for an entire waggon load once it is tipped or unloaded into the unloading bay receptacle. I have no intention of ever telling you how we can do that. Dave, my dad and Michael my husband, as of right now, will buy dross resulting from smelting processes, beverage cans, foil, extrusions, castings and anything and everything else containing aluminium on the basis of its aluminium content no matter how low that content may be. We’ll pay what ever the world market price is at the time for top quality scrap aluminium, and I mean the international price not the UK London market price, regardless of which is the higher. There is no need for you to melt anything down, just bring it in and you’ll be paid for the aluminium content regardless of the dross and crud content.

“If what you are selling contains large amounts of alloying metals we’ll similarly give you the world market price at the time for top quality scrap of whatever metals are present in the alloys. Mostly that will almost certainly be zinc which I suspect will be from what I don’t doubt you refer to as ‘shit metal’ ” There was an instant hush at her use of the usual but rather crude usage of the term for what was otherwise referred to as die cast zinc. “We can’t as yet handle bulk ferrous materials on any larger scale than we have done in the past, though if you have objects like catalytic converters or similar I suggest you come to talk to us about those. I’m sure we’ll be able to give you a better price than any one else and it will be based on exactly how much you have of whatever the articles contain, including the ferrous casing.

“If you wish to sell us an alloy like any type of brass or bronze you’ll get the price of the individual elements. If you have for example copper plumbing pipes you have no need to separate the soldered joints off from the copper tubing, for we’ll pay you for the copper content and the lead and tin too. Any domestic appliances, electric motors or computer items of any type, just bring them in as they are, and disregard the ferrous and any other content, for we’ll do any necessary separation. I’m sure you’ll be delighted with what we’ll pay you, for you'll be paid for whatever gold and other precious metals they contain. I suggest you just threw remotes, TVs, mobiles, printers, laptops and all else into the skip with the rest. Likewise cables and wires, irrespective of their nature or diameter, including Pyro and steel armoured cables, we’ll pay you for the copper and the ferrous content. There’s no need to remove any of the cladding, for we’ll deal with that at zero cost to you. My husband Michael shall determine the value of and what we shall be prepared to offer you for anything containing precious metals, he is an expert concerning all such and his opinion is final. If you don’t like it go elsewhere.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be honest, our goal is to revolutionise the reprocessing industry, and make a fortune doing it. We have a new and proprietary technology that will send many reprocessing businesses to the wall. It is our intention to expand into the ferrous metal industry in a year or two and into much more general reprocessing after that. We shall eventually take polymers of all types, all wood based products, which includes man made materials like hardboard and MDF as well as paper and cardboard, and eventually glass too. As of now, mixed loads will be no problem, the sorting will no longer be your problem. Eventually we’ll be happy to take insulation foam materials in bulk and asbestos materials too. If you hang on to them for a while till we’re able to deal with them that will give you a wider range of work to accept. As I said, eventually we’ll recycle everything, though we may not be able to pay you much initially for rubbish that you have already made money from by taking away. However we shall ultimately be able to sell you clean and eco-friendly carbon based solid fuel processed from some of your ‘rubbish’ that you will be able to sell as a wood or coal substitute. Some of the plastic rubbish and the vehicle tyres we'll be converting to diesel and the glass we already have a market for, but till we establish ourselves as a supplier of quality clean cullet we'll not get paid much for it. That’s just a matter of time, but it may take three or four years. However we are working on it. Our order of priority of whom we deal with regards ferrous and general rubbish in the early stages of our development shall be determined by those who have dealt with us most during our struggles to grow right now. It’s simple, you help us to make money now, and we’ll help you to make even more money in the future.

“Now I know a number of you have brought a load in to see what we shall pay you using our new system. You are at the top of our list of friends. You shall be provided with a comprehensive printout of exactly what your loads comprise and the price we paid you for each element in that load, some of which, carbon for instance, will be rated at zero pence per Kilo at the moment. I suggest those of you who haven’t brought in a load remain to talk with those who have after they have been paid. I know you will be more than pleasantly surprised. As required by law the usual comprehensive tracking of vehicles and bank accounts will be provided to the authorities. If you don’t like that I suggest you leave now because we are a one hundred percent legitimate business and will not pay you other than through a traceable bank account. Please don’t try to give me a hard time because I’m female. I’m one of Harry Connaught’s granddaughters, and if you try to bullshit me I’ll just fuck you off and tell you to sell your stuff elsewhere just like all the men in the family would.”

There was a silence as the audience of mostly men realised that Harry’s granddaughter had been reared by a hard man and Dave, his equally hard son. They reckoned she was little, if any, different from her granddad and dad, and in the business they were in that was the only way to survive. She was of their world, and just like her ancestors, a winner.

Half an hour later after the excellent meal provided by Imanicipita’s family, Jed who had brought in a three and a bit ton load [over 7000 pounds] of mixed scrap said to some of his mates in the bar, “Fuck me, Boys, this is the best deal on the planet. I was paid not quite three times what I was expecting. Look at this breakdown of what was in my load.” He passed the printout around. “I didn’t even know there was CAT converter on that van body shell I weighed in, but there it is, all the rare metals listed with their latest international prices and how much of each I weighed in and what I was paid for each. The breakdown includes all the stuff they’d take but wouldn’t pay for which at least I've not had to go to any hassle or cost to get rid of. Telling you, it doesn’t get any better than this. The spiel that Harry’s lass gave us was absolutely straight up plumb. Gerry from Abbeytown telt me she’s Harry’s second eldest’s youngest lass as went to university to study metal stuff which is why the meeting was here. He said everyone who knew the family reckoned she was as a clever a fucker as ever breathed. For sure she’s as pretty a lass as I ever met, and I could listen to her talking all day her English is that fancy, even if she does lay it damned hard on the line when she calls a spade a spade. When I talked to Gerry last week, he telt me to listen to her and listen hard if I wanted to make money. He telt me that all this new technology that would pay us all a hell of a sight more was invented by the lass and she was keeping it so close to her tits to make sure that none else would be able to compete on price. We all know that Harry’s kin are Rom(1) and like all Rom there’re as close as fuck and that all cover each other’s arses. Christ above, I’m telling you I’m glad I took Gerry’s advice and brought a load in. I’m just glad that I live local and have always weighed in with Harry. Tragedy is she’s took up with her cousin, cos if I were forty years younger I’d be having a go at courting her myself. At money like this I don’t give a fuck that she used to be a bloke.

1 Rom, Romany or real Gypsies, as opposed to travelling folk of other ethnic origins.