Kip Addotta's CDs!

Junk!

For the past decade, my husband's excuse for not going through his old junk was that he'd do it when we move. We're moving on Saturday. The replacement excuse is that he doesn't have time because he has too much packing to do. One could make the point that there'd be less packing to do if he'd toss some of his stuff. Bracing for high seas, one does.

"So you're calling this junk?" Ed is holding aloft a Tony Bennett album.

I am skating on thin ice here. Possibly I'm already down in the pond water, thrashing about with my skates. "Not specifically."

Ed says that many of his junk was irreplaceable. I recognize this argument. I believe I used it in explaining why I did not throw away, among other priceless items, a Pan Am airsickness bag, some rocks from the Arctic Circle with pretty orange lichen on them, and a 1987 USDA press release entitled "Milestones in Dairy History." But in those instances, it was my argument, and so it made excellent sense.

I press on. "But if you never listen to any of these albums, why would you want to replace them?"

Attempting to apply common sense in these scenarios is useless. I know this. Earlier in the week, I tried to discard a box of expired Super-8 movie film for which Ed has no camera. He vetoed the move, stating that he might one day find a Super-8 camera in a Goodwill store. Also vetoed was the throwing away of two shelves of college paperbacks. The pages were yellowed, and there was mildew on the covers. If you listened carefully you could hear them reaching out and making friends with my lichen. "Some of these books have meaning to me," said Ed, and then he paused. "I just don't know what the meaning is."

I recently read an article about hoarding in the animal kingdom. The male black wheatear bird, the article said, collects piles of heavy stones before the mating season. "Those with the largest piles are more likely to mate," the story explained and at the same time didn't really explain. If I should die suddenly -- which seems more and more likely as the week wears on -- Ed should consider expanding his dating pool to include female wheatear birds. I'll make a note of it in my will.

Ed tries to explain why he would want to keep a pile of records he never listens to. "It's just knowing that they're there. That I could listen to them if I wanted to." I remind him that his turntable doesn't work. "So, actually you can't listen to them." Which reminds me. I pick up the turntable and put it on the designated throwaway pile, which I had envisioned at the beginning of this undertaking as a towering, teetering mound engulfing most of our front entryway and portions of the sidewalk, but is in reality closer in size to the little mounds of toenail parings Ed occasionally stacks up on the bedside table. These are, happily, replaceable, and I encounter only token resistance when I throw them away.

"You can't throw the turntable out. It belongs to Andrea." Andrea is his ex-wife.

"So let's return it to her."

Ed looks genuinely puzzled. "It's broken. Why would she want it?"

In the end, we compromised. He kept some, and he sold some. He forgave me for the anguish I'd caused him, because he was able to get $240 for his junk at the junk store. This he used to buy junk, which take up not quite but almost the same square footage as the junk, and will impress the heck out of the next female wheatear who comes to town.

Junk

Scrap is a term used to describe recyclable materials left over from every manner of product consumption (such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials). Often confused with waste, scrap in fact has monetary value and is one of the United States’ largest exports.

Overall, the scrap industry processes more than 145 million tons of recyclable material each year into raw material feedstock for industrial manufacturing around the world. The industry contributed $65 billion in 2006 and is one of the few contributing positively to the U.S. balance of trade, exporting $15.7 billion in scrap commodities in 2006. Scrap recycling also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserves energy and natural resources. For example, scrap recycling diverts 145 million tons of materials away from landfills. Recycled scrap is a raw material feedstock for 2 out of 3 pounds of steel made in the U.S., for 60% of the metals and alloys produced in the U.S., for more than 50% of the U.S. paper industry’s needs, and for 33% of U.S. aluminum. Recycled scrap helps keep air and water cleaner by removing potentially hazardous materials and keeping them out of landfills.

Scrap is often taken to a wrecking yard (known colloquially as a scrapyard), where it is processed for later melting into new products. A scrapyard (also known as a breaker's yard), depending on its location, may allow customers to browse their lot and purchase items before they are sent to the smelters although many scrap yards that deal in large quantities of scrap usually do not, often selling entire units such as engines or machinery by weight with no regard to their functional status. Customers are typically required to supply all of their own tools and labor to extract parts, and some scrapyards may first require waiving liability for personal injury before entering. Many scrapyards also sell bulk metals (stainless steel, etc) by weight, often at prices substantially below the retail purchasing costs of similar pieces.

In contrast to a wreckers, scrapyards typically sell everything by weight, rather than by item. To the scrapyard, the primary value of the scrap is what the smelter will give them for it, rather than the value of whatever shape the metal may be in. An auto wrecker, on the other hand, would price the exact same scrap based on what the item does, regardless of what it weighs. Typically, if a wrecker can not sell something above the value of the metal in it, they would then take it to the scrapyard and sell it by weight. Equipment containing parts of various metals can often be purchased at a price below that of either of the metals, due to saving the scrapyard the labor of separating the metals before shipping them to be recycled. As an example, a scrapyard in Arcata, California sells automobile engines for $0.25 per pound, while aluminum, of which the engine is mostly made, sells for $1.25 per pound.

Note that in the scrap metal industry a great potential exists for accidents in which a hazardous material present in scrap causes death, injury or environmental damage. A classic example is radioactivity in scrap; see the Goiânia accident for an example of an accident involving radioactive material which entered the scrap metal industry and some details of the behaviour of contaminating chemical elements in metal smelters.