Used, but not all used up
Tijuana scrap buyers make living collecting, selling metal discards
By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 9, 2004
TIJUANA ? Ram?n Olmedo Rodriguez drives his battered truck through the city's bumpy outskirts, buying old car batteries, aluminum cans and scrap metal
from some of Tijuana's poorest residents.
At the end of the day, with his pickup full of odds and ends, he sells what he has collected to a business in Tijuana that prepares the scrap for
export to the United States. Many of the parts will be recycled north of the border to build homes, appliances and cars.
With his black smock and portable scale, Olmedo represents one element in a little-known cross-border business based on Tijuana's junk.
The United States often sends its second-hand goods to Tijuana, but the northbound recycling is proof that the demand for used goods comes full
circle, fueled by global markets and industrial production trends.
"Scrap flows to where the need is," said Steve Weiner, vice president of purchasing for a U.S.-based recycling company that buys from Mexico. "When
the U.S. steel mills are busy, they need more scrap, and right now the scrap market is high."
U.S. companies also typically pay more for the scrap than Mexican companies, fueling the northbound flow of recyclables at the border.
Tijuana is a frequent receptacle of used goods, and its residents are ingenious at making a living off of them.
Clothing purchased from San Diego garage sales is patched up and re-sold at Tijuana swap meets. Junk cars from north of the border are fixed south of
the border, or sold for spare parts. Even old school desks are auctioned off to a few seasoned bidders from Tijuana and Mexicali.
But eventually, those goods break down and the most industrious Tijuana resident can do little with them. They end up in illegal dumping grounds, or
littering residents' back yards. If they can be recycled ? particularly aluminum cans, metal parts, old car batteries and radiators ? they end up
Olmedo's hands.
Arnulfo Camacho, assistant director of the city's public services division, said the city hasn't yet adopted a recycling program, but hopes to do so
someday to cash in on the profits.
"Tijuana's trash is a rich resource," Camacho said.
The desire for Tijuana's scrap forms the basis of a large-scale operation involving hundreds of people like Olmedo and several Tijuana-based export
businesses that clean and press the products before sending them north of the border.
About 50 percent of Tijuana's collectable scrap comes from the proliferation of foreign-run border factories, called maquiladoras, formed 10 years ago
under the North American Free Trade Agreement, said Arnulfo Rivas, who runs a business that buys recyclables from Olmedo and other scrap collectors.
Olmedo, 47, said he became a scrap metal collector after struggling to get by on construction work in Tijuana after moving here from the Mexican state
of Jalisco 13 years ago.
Tijuana is in a construction boom now, but back then, he said, the work was trickling off. One of his brothers had been selling scrap metal for years,
and Olmedo decided to give it a try. The amount he makes depends on the global market for steel and other recyclables. He is currently making about
$600 a month, he said, working anywhere from two to eight hours a day, six days a week.
The money allows him to get by. He owns a small house in the eastern Tijuana section of Mariano Matamoros, where he lives with his wife and children.
Many of the Tijuana residents involved in the recycling business are recent arrivals from other parts of Mexico. They usually can earn more here,
though the cost of living is higher.
"I've been doing this for one year," said Manuel Ram?rez, 32, who also drives a truck through neighborhoods and came from the state of Jalisco about
three years ago. "I saw people selling this stuff and at first I would just bring the products over in a sack, but then that got too heavy and I
borrowed the truck from a friend."
Ram?rez said that he is content so far with his new life in Tijuana.
"It's a little harder to get by, by you can do OK," he said.
The door-to-door collectors don't have fixed routes, or a set schedule, which means that they occasionally run into each other on the road or find
that a competitor has cleared out a neighborhood recently. Sometimes, Olmedo said, there have been fights.
The drivers, who often work in Tijuana's poorest neighborhoods, must watch out for the evils of the road. Thieves sometimes prey on the drivers. Tires
get punctured on the bumpy, unpredictable terrain. Gas runs out fast. Olmedo has made it a habit to turn off the engine when he heads downhill.
Both Olmedo and Ram?rez bring their goods to Metales El Nuco, run by Arnulfo Rivas.
Rivas said his father, who emigrated from the state of Durango more than three decades ago, started out like Ram?rez and Olmedo. Back then, Rivas
said, trucks from the United States came down to pick up the goods.
"But then we got our own trailers and opened this business," Rivas said.
Inside the lot, workers cleaned out dirty radiators before they could be shipped to the United States. Others crunched piles of aluminum cans that
glinted in the bright sunlight. Rims were plucked from old tires, and added to the pile of metal goods.
A large machine with a magnet rim roved across a pile of goods, catching metal parts and then placing them in a nearby truck.
Rivas said about 90 percent of the stuff, including the aluminum cans, ends up in the United States and the rest is sold to recycling centers in
Mexico.
He said he sells most of his products to Long Beach-based Pacific Coast Recycling, which processes metal goods, such as stainless steel and
copper-based alloys, but not aluminum cans.
Steve Weiner, vice president of purchasing for Pacific Coast Recycling, said the company receives at least 2,000 tons to 3,000 tons of products from
Mexicali and Tijuana per month, accounting for about 5 percent of its business.
The company's San Diego satellite facility converts the metal from Mexico into cubes and ball chunks. Then it is sold to a steel mill that shapes the
metal into rods, coils and plates for industrial use.
Weiner said his business is paying more than $100 per ton for the scrap metal, "which is historically a very high number."
Back in Tijuana, Olmedo acknowledged that he is earning more money now than in previous years. The other day, he said, he turned in $100 worth of
goods to Rivas' center, netting a $40 profit.
But on this day, as he rode through Tijuana with his 13-year-old son, also named Ram?n, no one was responding to their taped announcement that
crackled through a loudspeaker.
The demand for recyclables may be based on global markets, but other factors come into play on Olmedo's rounds. Sometimes, he said, he will pay more
to some people and less to others, depending on what they seem to need. He also has a soft side for children.
Three boys bounced in front of his car, waiting for him to weigh their aluminum cans with a portable scale he uses for lighter products. He offered
them 5 pesos. They asked for 6. "If I give you 6, then what am I going to earn?" he chided them.
In the end, Olmedo pressed 2 pesos, or about 18 cents, into each child's palm.
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