Scavenging in America: back to the future?

Resources, Conservation and Recycling

31 (2001) 229–240

Scavenging in America: back to the future?

Martin Medina *El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, P.O. Box L, Chula Vista, CA 91912, USA

Received 28 July 1999; accepted 25 August 2000

Abstract

The informal recovery of recyclables in the US has been carried out by scavengers sincesoon after the arrival of the European settlers. This paper analyzes scavenging activities inAmerica from the 17th century to the present. It argues that throughout this periodscavenging has been an important survival strategy to mostly poor and immigrant individu-als. Scavenging continued to exist even in the booming economy of the 1990s due toindustrial demand for inexpensive raw materials and the persistence of poverty. The paperalso argues that, in the event of a downturn in the US economy and if the safety net for thepoor were severely curtailed, scavenging could increase significantly. © 2001 Elsevier ScienceB.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Scavenging; Recycling; History; US

www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

1. Introduction

The literature on recycling contains several assertions on scavengers and theiractivities. First, it is often assumed that scavenging is a relatively recent activity.Second, scavengers are often portrayed as the poorest of the poor. Third, scaveng-ing is considered as a marginal occupation, i.e an activity that has a negligibleeconomic impact on society. This paper examines the previous three statements byanalyzing contemporary and historical evidence on scavenging in the US.

Scavenging has been a common occupation among immigrant and poor individ-uals throughout the American history. Since the arrival of European settlers to thepresent, individuals have salvaged various waste materials to be reused or recycled.

* Tel.: +1-52-66313535; fax: +1-52-66313065.E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Medina).

0921-3449/01/$ - see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII: S0921 -3449 (00 )00082 -3

M. Medina / Resources, Conser6ation and Recycling 31 (2001) 229–240230

Despite being an ordinary pursuit, the study of scavenging activities — past andpresent — in America has been neglected. We know little about the social,economic and environmental impact of scavenging. We lack a thorough under-standing of the characteristics of the individuals and of the causal factors thatcompel them to become scavengers. This paper attempts to fill some of the gaps inour knowledge of scavenging and discusses a possible scenario for the next fewyears, given the current trend towards cutting back welfare benefits for the poor.

2. Scavenging in the past

The recovery of recyclables from the waste stream by scavengers has a longtradition in America. Evidence suggests that scavenging and recycling activitiesappeared in colonial America as an adaptive response to scarcity. A significantpercentage of the European immigrants arrived with little money. Britain prohib-ited industrial activities in Colonial America for two main reasons. First, to ensurethat the colonists would purchase British products. Second, to prevent the indus-trial activities in the colonies from competing with the British industry. Neverthe-less, nearly every home produced some kind of manufactured items on a smallscale. Many households, for example, produced their own soap from animal fatDolan, 1964a.

The reuse and recycling of materials involved less effort and energy thanobtaining them from virgin sources. The colonists developed a resource-efficientculture in which products were used for as long as possible, reused, mended,repaired, and, when they were useless, recovered and recycled. Melting and recy-cling metals, for instance, made economic sense compared with the mining andrefining necessary for obtaining them from virgin sources. Thus, the causes ofscavenging activities are fundamentally economic (Medina, 1997a, 2000a).

Some of the earliest documented instances of recycling in America are thefollowing. Joseph Jenks used commercial scrap in the first iron furnace in thecountry, built in Massachusetts in 1642, only 22 years after the pilgrims arrived atPlymouth. Paul Revere, the Massachusetts patriot, also engaged in recyclingactivities, advertising for and buying scrap copper and brass for his foundry(Barringer, 1954a; Weeks, 1969a).

The first paper mill in the country was established in 1690, and for about 125years papermaking relied on scavengers or ‘rag pickers’ who supplied rags to themills. Prior to the widespread use of wood pulp in paper manufacture, linen andcotton rags constituted the most important raw materials for the paper industry.Scavengers recovered post-consumer rags thus playing a crucial role in papermak-ing. Rag pickers formed an important and essential part of the recycling system.The demand for rags often exceeded the supply, which created a chronic shortageof rags. Rags were scarce, because people used clothing as long as possible anddiscarded them infrequently, due to widespread poverty. Newspaper ads andappeals for people — particularly housewives, children and domestics — to savetheir rags were common in the 18th century. Sometimes the ads offered monetary

M. Medina / Resources, Conser6ation and Recycling 31 (2001) 229–240 231

rewards for rags in addition to their full value (Anonymous, 1941; Weeks, 1969b;Munsell, 1980).

In 1776, Massachusetts enacted a law appointing a person in each town to receiverags for the paper mills, and urging people to save their rags. Scavengers called forrags from house to house until the end of the 18th century. Rag collection,therefore, was considered a strategic activity by the authorities, who tried to conveythis to the public by propagandizing it as a patriotic endeavor and appealed topeople to save their rags (Weeks, 1969c; Lipsett, 1974a).

After independence, and freed from the restrictions on trade and industryimposed by Britain, industrial activities grew gradually. Industry began producingconsumer goods, agricultural implements, and industrial tools and equipment.Economic activities created demand for raw materials, such as rags for papermak-ing and metals for various industrial uses. Industrial activities developed first inNew England, where many towns specialized in the manufacture of a particularproduct. Waterbury, CT produced brass, Leominster, MA, manufactured hornproducts, such as combs and buttons, and so on. Scavenging activities satisfied thatdemand for materials while providing a livelihood to many immigrants (Dolan,1964b).

Peddling played a significant role in American society and economy for nearlythree centuries. Peddling originated in Boston, the main port in the East Coast, inthe 17th century. Peddlers distributed consumer goods and supplies to pioneerfamilies. Since cash was scarce in the colonial period, peddlers accepted animal furs,scrap metal and other items as payment. Some peddlers specialized in a particularproduct and others provided services. Tinkers, for example, went from house tohouse repairing pewter objects and collecting cracked or bent pewter ware to berecycled. Colonial society imposed rigid social distinctions between ‘freemen’ and‘goodmen’. The traditional occupations available to ‘goodmen’ were sailor, fisher-man, shipbuilder or apprentice to a tailor, candle maker, soap boiler or silversmith.Peddling provided an alternative livelihood and opportunities for advance, adven-ture and travel. Some peddlers prospered and became wholesalers, selling to otherpeddlers. Peddlers were the main link between producers and consumers (Dolan,1964c).

During the 18th and 19th centuries, and as late as the 1930s, peddling flourished.Peddlers, first equipped with backpacks and canoes and then with rafts and horsewagons, collected rags, bones, scrap metal and other waste materials from cityalleys and municipal dumps. They bartered a wide array of merchandise, such aspots, pans, washbasins, trays, beeswax, eyeglasses, calico, medicines, and so forth,in exchange for rags, bones, scrap metal and other waste materials. Scrap metal wasmelted and recycled into new products, while bones were used to make glue, andrags to make paper or rag rugs (Barringer, 1954b).

Scrap collection provided a livelihood to many poor immigrants from Northernand Eastern Europe that escaped from the economic and social turmoil in Europein the 1840s. Enterprising Italian and Jewish immigrants played a significant role infounding the scrap recycling industry in America. Many Jews and Italians startedcollecting scrap in horse carts, prospered and became dealers and owners of steel


minimills. Minimills use scrap metal as its main raw material in steel manufacture,as opposed to integrated mills, that use virgin materials. The present-day giants ofscrap and waste materials, as well as several leading US financiers and merchantsstarted out as peddlers, such as Sears Roebuck and Scovill Manufacturing Co.Several fortunes were made in the 19th century by recovering and recycling wastematerials. In Randolph, MA, a man named Pratt made a fortune by collectingscrap leather from harness-makers’ shops and shoemakers’ shops to makeshoestrings (Katzman, 1988).

After the Civil War, the country experienced rapid urban growth, which in-creased the generation of wastes and provided scavengers more opportunities torecover kitchen wastes, dead cats and dogs, and all kinds of materials to make aliving. Recycling was particularly extensive in New England during the nineteenthcentury, in which individuals exchanged tin ware for rags, rubber and metals. Therewere a number of depots specialized in equipping those immigrants as peddlersthroughout the Northeast, with the larger ones based in Brooklyn. As late as the1930s, collectors could hire horses and wagons for $1 a day, plus 50¢ per day forfeed (Barringer, 1954c; Melosi, 1973).

At the beginning of the 20th century, the most common materials gathered byscavengers in the Midwest and the Southeast were horseshoes, wagon tires andmetal scrap from old agricultural equipment. And in the Southwest, bison, cattleand horse bones accumulated on the prairies of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas,which were used by glue-making companies. Scrap rubber could also be obtained inlarge quantities from discarded rubber boots and shoes, rubber rollers from oldwashing machines and other products. A method commonly used at the turn of thecentury was called ‘reduction’, by which dead animals and organic wastes werecooked to produce grease — used in the manufacture of perfume, lubricants,glycerin, candles and soap — as well as a residual used as fertilizer (Lipsett, 1974b).

Up until the end of the 19th century, most American cities lacked municipalwaste collection. Scavengers performed the bulk of waste collection in manyAmerican towns and cities at the turn of the century. Scavenging teams collectedapproximately 350 000 loads of household wastes, ashes, and street sweepings inBoston in 1890, about 2000 cubic yards of refuse daily in Chicago during the sameyear, and an average of 612 t of wastes a day in New York City at the turn of thecentury. Also in New York, scavengers removed 15 000 dead horses — then usedwidely for transportation — from city streets in 1888. Until 1878, the city of NewYork paid the so-called ‘scow trimmers’ for their services and allowed them to keepwhat they recovered from the wastes. These individuals rummaged through mixedwastes on the dumping scows — barges used to transport the refuse from the cityto the disposal sites — searching for reusable and recyclable items. From 1878 to1882 the city eliminated the payments but allowed scavengers to salvage any itemsfrom the waste. And starting in 1882, local authorities charged a flat rate to scowtrimmers for the privilege of scavenging the city’s refuse. Most of these scowtrimmers were Italian immigrants organized by the local padrones (Thompson,1879; Anonymous, 1891; American Public Works Association, 1976; Hering andGreely, 1921; Melosi, 1981; Strasser, 1999).


Scavenging at a large scale continued during the first half of the twentieth centuryin the US from streets and dumps. Scavengers collected various types of materialsfor reuse or recycling in American dumps until the 1950s, when, for sanitaryconsiderations, as well as potential liability suits from scavengers, dump scavengingwas banned (Rathje and Murphy, 1992).

Poverty is an important factor that causes people to become scavengers, but it isnot the only one. Extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary measures. Intimes of war or severe economic crises, scavenging reappears with particularintensity. For example, during the American Revolution, the women of the coloniesbrought to the town squares their spare lead, pewter, iron kettles and pots in orderto be melted for weapons. During the Civil War, drives in the South producedwater pipes, sash weights, bells and other metal items to be recycled and made intoweapons. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, many unemployed individualscollected scrap as a means of obtaining some cash. And during World War II andthe Korean War, salvage drives in the US produced 9 and 2.5 million t, respec-tively, of scrap that would not have been available under normal conditions(Barringer, 1954d; Hunter, 1967).

3. Contemporary scavenging

Although in different form than in the past, scavenging still exists in America.The poor and the homeless recover materials from the waste stream for reuse orrecycling. No hard, reliable data exist on the number of individuals engaged inscavenging, since it is an unregulated and unrecorded activity. No research has beenconducted to obtain an estimate of informal recycling activities. Nevertheless, it hasbeen estimated that there are, at any given night, about 700 000 homeless people inthe US, and scavenging has been found to be a common activity among them(Demko and Jackson, 1995).

Research on homelessness and scavenging is scarce, but a 1987 study amongaluminum can collectors in Cincinnati, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky, found that14% of the individuals interviewed reported to be homeless. Of the individuals inthe sample, 36% received Social Security, disability or pension payments; 26%received welfare or charity; 18% reported to be engaged in odd jobs, such as sellingtheir plasma or cleaning lots; 16% received assistance from their family or friends,and 4% had full-time jobs. Thus, for these collectors, recovering aluminum canssupplements other sources of income. Ninety-six percent of the respondents weremale; 26% were black, and 42% were war veterans. As for reasons why theyscavenge, 76% indicated that they could not find another job or that they weredisabled or too old (Royse, 1987).

Collecting aluminum cans provides scavengers with cash while rendering avaluable service to society. Among the benefits of salvaging aluminum cans are thereduction of litter, and the environmental benefits of recycling aluminum, such asenergy savings, reduced water consumption and lower air and water pollution,compared to the recovery of aluminum from bauxite. Homeless and poor individu-


als also recover food to eat from grocery stores’ dumpsters, discarded clothes forreuse, recyclables for sale, and whatever items they find that can be resold, such asbooks (Medina, 2000b).

For a number of years, aluminum cans have been one of the most common itemsrecovered by scavengers. Aluminum can collectors can be observed, particularly inbig cities, around the country. In many cities, scavengers steal aluminum cans thathave been separated at the source by households participating in recycling pro-grams. In recent years, the recovery and stealing of paper by scavengers has alsoincreased. Encouraged by historical price highs for most grades of paper in themid-1990s, scavengers have resorted to stealing source-separated paper from recy-cling programs. The price of newsprint, for instance, went from $445 per t in June1993 to $680 in May 1995 and market pulp went from $465 per t to $910 in thesame period (Jaffe, 1995).

The thieves, known as ‘paper poachers’, steal the newspapers placed curbsidebefore being picked up by city crews. Paper poachers use different methods than thealuminum can collectors: the former use pick up trucks, vans and even trailer bedsto transport the paper, while the latter use plastic garbage bags and shopping carts.Thus, the paper poachers reduce the local recycling programs’ revenues. In an effortto stop scavenging and the drain of revenue, cities have followed different ap-proaches, ranging from requiring a permit to collect materials, to outright banningof scavenging, and even crackdowns conducted by police officers. The problem ofpaper poaching has been more severe in big cities� Los Angeles lost an estimated 4000 tons of newsprint a month to paper poachers

at a cost of $2 million in lost revenues in 1995. The city plans to instructparticipants in its recycling program to separate at the source mixed grades ofpaper with the newsprint, to make scavenging more difficult (Mitchell, 1995).

� Paper thieves cost New York City around $4.5 million in 1995 by beating citycrews on recycling days. Sanitation police officers started arresting and finingpaper poachers in January 1995. Scavengers also recover cans, bottles,magazines, clothes and anything else that can be restored, resold or recycled(Anonymous, 1995).

� According to several reports, organized scavengers working in teams in order tosteal cans and bottles from recycling bins, are common in Southern California.As a result of persistent scavenging, 220 cities and 33 counties in California haverecycling programs with anti-scavenging provisions (Lacey, 1994).

� Theft of recyclables from recycling bins have been observed in cities across thecountry, including Chicago, Detroit, Houston, St. Louis, Washington DC,Boston, and San Francisco (Warren, 1989; Hartstein, 1995; Thomas, 1995;Mason, 1995; Verhoevek, 1995; Bowles, 1995; Matthews, 1995).Scavengers show a high degree of creativity in their undertakings, which some-

times constitute criminal activities. A reportedly common practice, especially inpoor neighborhoods, is the scavenging of bricks of abandoned and partiallydestroyed buildings. Those bricks are later reused in construction projects. Con-struction companies often ‘hire’ and pay individuals to recover bricks from thosebuildings. Brick scavenging has been reported in the Bronx, New York, San


Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, Lowell and Lawrence, MA, as well as in NewOrleans. In Harlem, New York City, scavengers, many of them homeless, recoverscrap metal from abandoned buildings along the waterfront. In Detroit, scavengersstrip historic buildings of recyclable materials, as well as of items to be sold toantique collectors. Also in Detroit, scavengers steal scrap metal in midnight raidsfrom abandoned manufacturing plants, which has prompted a federal investigation(Aiges, 1989; Kahn et al., 1993; St. John, 1993; Holland, 1996; Sullivan, 1994;Almeida, 1995).

A potentially dangerous practice, for the scavengers themselves and for citydwellers in general, is the theft of copper wire from electrical facilities, electrical andtelephone lines, construction sites, and from subway transmission lines. In the NewYork City subway, for instance, such thefts have existed for several years, causingdelays, and the death of a thief in 1993. In 1992 alone there were 384 cases of theftof copper wire in the New York City subways. Scrap dealers sometimes assist thethieves by waiting nearby with a van or truck. Theft of copper wire has also beenreported in Russia and Mexico (Faison, 1993; Bivens, 1993; Santacruz, 1995).

Scavengers take advantage of special occasions in which unusual items arediscarded. For example, a large number of scavengers were out during the desig-nated week that residents of Birmingham, Michigan could throw away large piecesof furniture. And scavengers are usually out and active at the end of each semesterin the college town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when students move out anddiscard furniture and other reusable or repairable items (Colborn, 1991; Medina,1995).

4. The future of scavenging?

Predicting the future is a risky business. Pages and pages could be filled withpredictions that never materialized. Nevertheless, it seems improbable that thepaper industry will rely, once again, on rags as its main raw material. The return ofthe ‘rag men’ can be considered highly doubtful. It is also unlikely that the‘peddlers’ will make a comeback in the future and be as common as they once werein 19th-century America.

Two components are necessary for a market to exist, i.e. supply and demand. Forany recyclable material, the interplay of factors that affect demand and supplydetermine the price for that material. Variables such as interest rates, economicgrowth, natural disasters in producing areas, investment, mandated minimumrecycled product content, consumer spending, and consumer expectations about thefuture affect the demand and prices paid for recyclables. On the other hand, thesupply of recyclables has shown a steady increase over the last several years due tothe proliferation of recycling programs in American cities: curbside pickup pro-grams for recyclables went from 1042 in 1988 to 6678 in 1995. Prices paid forrecyclables tend to fluctuate widely, depending on market conditions. The highprices for pulp and the different grades of paper in the mid-1990s encouragedscavengers to steal paper from recycling programs. In the future, scavengers are


likely to react in a similar fashion to high prices of recyclable materials (Young,1995).

Based on historical and recent experience on scavenging, the following general-izations can be advanced.

4.1. Sca6engers tend to be migrants

For most of US history, scavengers have tended to be migrants. The nationalorigin of scavengers reflects the large migratory movements into the US. Scavengersin the 17th century were English and Irish, then mostly Italians and EasternEuropean Jews in the 19th century. And in the second half of the 20th century,scavenging by Hispanic individuals grew significantly, particularly in states andregions with large Hispanic populations, such as California, Texas, and the NewYork City metropolitan area.

4.2. Sca6engers tend to be poor

Scavenging constitutes a source of cash for disabled or old individuals with lowincomes. Scavengers’ substandard earnings may be due to their low educationallevel or to the lack of marketable skills. Scavengers are willing to put up with directcontact with mixed wastes, which may entail health risks, because they may have noother choice. Nevertheless, scavenging in the past provided opportunities forupward mobility to some entrepreneurial individuals, who became middlemen,wholesalers, founders of companies, and owners of steel minimills.

4.3. Society ascribes a low status to sca6engers

Society considers scavenging as one of the least desirable activities due toscavengers’ daily proximity with garbage and their sometimes raggedly appearance.In the 17th century, people referred to scavengers and peddlers as ‘rascals’ and inposterior centuries as ‘vagabonds,’ ‘vagrants,’ and less than honest individuals.Public contempt for scavengers is still common nowadays.

4.4. Sca6enging acti6ities supplement other sources of income

Even though information on scavenging in the US is scarce, this occupationseems to be an important survival strategy for the poor, the homeless, and somemigrants.

4.5. Sca6engers react to market conditions

In an effort to maximize their earnings, scavengers retrieve the recyclables thatcommand the highest prices. If the price is high enough, scavengers will collect thatmaterial, and in some cases, they will steal it from recycling programs, buildings,and from existing electrical wires, telephone lines or subway transmission lines. The


US is the world’s largest source of recyclable materials and the largest exporter.Increasingly, materials from curbside recycling programs are sold and recycledabroad, particularly in Mexico and Asia. International trade in recyclables has beengrowing rapidly over the last few years. Mexico purchased 1 billion dollars ofrecyclables from the US in 1998. The North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) has eliminated most tariffs on recyclables, which has increased importsby Mexico from 700 000 t in 1993 to 1.2 million t in 1997. The current economiccrisis in Asia has reduced demand and trade in recyclables in that area, but it isexpected to go up again in the near future. These factors and others that affect theglobal supply and demand for recyclables determine the prices paid for thosematerials.

Thus, poor individuals willing to scavenge and industrial demand for materialsare two necessary conditions for scavenging to exist. Demand and prices paid forrecyclables will certainly continue to fluctuate, depending on market conditions.Nevertheless, the collection of aluminum cans by scavengers will probably continueto exist in the foreseeable future, due to the ubiquitous presence of aluminum cansin the waste stream, as well as the lower capital and operating costs of recyclingaluminum, compared to the use of virgin aluminum. Furthermore, aluminumcompanies raised prices for aluminum sheet (used to make beverage cans) by 50%on 1 January 1995. The new price for converting the ingot into sheet is $0.32 peringot plus the market price of the ingot. Companies that manufacture their owncans by recycling used beverage cans avoid the payment of the new fee, whichtranslates into lower costs. Moreover, a plant that recycles aluminum cans can bebuilt at a fraction of the cost of building one that makes cans from virgin resources.Therefore, aluminum recycling makes economic sense (Conny and Coors, 1990;Sorrentino, 1995).

It is highly unlikely that poverty will be completely eradicated in America in thenear future. Scavenging has persisted in the US despite a booming economy in the1990s, low unemployment and general prosperity. Furthermore, given the currentbacklash against welfare, the existing safety net for the poor could be severelycurtailed. If that happens, in order to survive, the poor could be forced to scavengeto make up for lost income or to supplement minimum-wage earnings.

Homeless and poor individuals in other developed countries, such as Canada,Japan, Spain and Italy recover food to eat from dumpsters located outside grocerystores, as well as discarded clothing to be reused, recyclables for sale, and whateveritems they find that can be resold, such as books. Despite the existence of a safetynet for the poor and widespread prosperity in industrialized countries, scavengingpersists. Some of the homeless individuals who scavenge have decided to live on thestreets, despite the existence of shelters. It seems that for some, living on the streetsand scavenging is a lifestyle that they prefer. Some scavengers suffer from mentalillnesses and substance abuse problems. Still others complement income fromminimum wage earnings, welfare, disability, and social security payments withscavenging (Medina, 1997b).

Scavenging is a common occurrence in the Third World countries, because ofhigh unemployment, widespread poverty and lack of a safety net for the poor.


Scavenging has also increased in Eastern Europe, in the aftermath of the collapseof the Soviet Union, and the ensuing unemployment and removal of the safety netin those countries. If the safety net for America’s poor were removed, scavengingwould probably increase, magnifying the theft of recyclables and potential conflictbetween scavengers and recycling programs. The lack of a safety net could result ina return to widespread scavenging by the poor. Thus, scavengers, particularlyaluminum can collectors, could become as common as the ‘rag men’ and the‘peddlers’ of the past (Medina, 1997c).

5. Conclusions

The study of scavenging activities in the past and in the present in America hasbeen neglected. There are many gaps in our knowledge of scavenging, its patterns,how it has evolved throughout history, and on its importance. More research isnecessary, particularly to obtain an estimate of the economic importance of thisactivity and on its linkages with the formal sector. Nevertheless, and based on theevidence examined for this paper, it is possible to conclude that scavenging hasexisted since the arrival of European settlers. Despite appearances that scavengerswere the poorest of the poor, this activity provided a livelihood to many immigrantsas well opportunities for upward mobility. Some clever and enterprising scavengerswere even able to make a fortune by recovering particular waste materials.

Scavenging played a crucial role in supplying raw materials to various industries,such as papermaking and steel making. Before cities had municipal waste collec-tion, scavengers performed this activity as well. Scavenging, therefore, has had asignificant social, economic, and environmental impact. Scavenging constitutes anadaptive response to scarcity, and is more prevalent in periods of high unemploy-ment and poverty, economic crises and during wars. Individuals become scavengersdue to lack of education, marketable skills, old age, drug or mental problems.Today, scavenging supplements other sources of income for disadvantaged individ-uals. Scavengers respond to economic factors and recover the materials with thehighest prices that the industry demand. When the price of a material is high,scavengers may even resort to stealing it. In the event of a downturn in the USeconomy and removal of the safety net for the poor, scavenging could increase,which could cause conflicts with municipal recycling programs.

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Scavenging in America: back to the future?