How to turn junk into cash

The Asian appetite for metal is so strong that Wanganui businesses are keen to pick up spent whiteware and cars to supply it, Scrap Metal Wanganui owner Richard Garland says.
It is cheaper to melt down scrap than to mine new ore and make new metal - and metal is in demand in the growing Asian economies as well as in European markets.
Mr Garland is one of about five businesses in Wanganui collecting scrap for sale.
He supplies just one Wellington exporter, sending about 36 tonnes of steel south every week, as well as other metals.
The steel goes to South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam. Stainless steel is shipped to Rotterdam in the Netherlands for distribution in Europe.
High grade aluminium goes to Japan, though demand for that may reduce for a while because of the country's March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Lower grade aluminium goes to China. Vietnam and China both buy copper and brass from items such as car batteries.
Demand for metal has been fairly constant since Mr Garland started his business in 1996. He sits in his office making decisions with daily updates on prices from the London Metal Exchange, and an eye on the fluctuating value of the dollar.
During 2008 people were not buying because of the banking crisis. Prices were artificially high before that and he had queues of people waiting to sell him metal on Saturday mornings.
"I knew it couldn't last forever but I still got caught," he said.
Metal can be a target for thieves and there are systems in place to thwart them.
Dealers have to record all the details of the sellers, including names, addresses and car registration numbers.
They ask for photo identification, usually a driver's licence.
Those details go to police every week.
"I will not buy any scrap from people who can't identify themselves," Mr Garland said.
Once he was away from work when an employee rang him and told him to get more money out of the bank because two men had brought in a lot of copper. When he got back he saw the copper had already been baled by another dealer. He rang the police.
"Those guys had stolen it over the weekend from a scrapyard in Palmerston North and brought it here to sell."
He has had scrap stolen from both his Ridgway St and Rogers St yards - and someone even tried to sell it back to him once.
Metal prices make theft attractive.
A copper hot water cylinder fetches about $100, while Mr Garland will buy an old car for between $180 and $250.
It will then be stripped of motor, gearbox, battery and other valuable metal, and the remainder crushed.
Mr Garland has three staff in his business, including son Simon. He has two large trucks and a smaller one, a forklift, presses and other implements for compacting metal.
He tries to get everything away weekly, rather than storing it. Staff will pick up large lots from as far away as Ohakune, Patea and Taihape.
The bulk of his metal comes from industrial clients, especially a big one that has frequent mechanical breakdowns.
Aluminium cans are worth only 2.4c each at present - not an attractive prospect for collecting. But that isn't the spirit of a good scrap metal dealer.
"Little bits make bigger bits. You keep adding them all up together and eventually you will have a weight," Mr Garland said.