why do people collect scrap metal/ aluminum, and what’s it used for/worth?
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Metal can be melted down and re-used.
Scrapyards (generally) first check to see if any of it can be re-used as is. (This is common for, say, cars.) If not, it gets melted down and re-sold.
Metal is (relatively) easy to do; you don’t really need to process it beforehand like you do with, say, plastic or mixed junk. And there’s a lot of metals worth a lot of money (copper, for example).
That’s often why yards will pay less for “mixed scrap” because they *do* have to process it (i.e. sort it and take out all the rubber/plastic/etc that’s invariably in there).
People collect it for money. Aluminum cans are common because people can collect them through the trash and turn them in.
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