Living in the ‘up and coming’ area of town, I thought I was the only one in the office witnessing what I can only describe as a new breed of recyclers. However, a brief mention one day, and my colleagues confirmed that there’s a whole network of this modern rag and bone man across the city.

In my part of the city, every Sunday evening (before waste collections on Monday morning), you can witness several white vans, in various conditions, prowling up and down the street, looking for items they can sell on or scrap. I want to say it’s rubbish that you’ve put out on the pavement, but unlike kerbside recyclers, these individuals are apt to have a nose around your front garden, just as in that episode of The Apprentice where two of the wannabes went out collecting junk and wondered whether a BBQ in someone’s front yard was fair game. They decided against it. But my next-door neighbour had his defunct strimmer (the blade was metal) taken from inside his garden (which, truth be told, saved him a trip), and within an hour of a steel bath going out in front of our house, it was gone. Taken by the informal recycler.

Let us be clear, however, that this is not as romantic a vision as the horse and cart of old, and the hazards

are many. Certainly, the characters I see are not ones to stand on ceremony – a sink is hauled out of a skip and smashed against the pavement until the metal taps are freed.

Of course, it is well known that in urban, developing countries there’s a whole network of informal recyclers. And despite the studies that show that when organised and supported, waste picking can reap many rewards, including creating jobs, leading to monetary and environmental savings, these individuals remain stigmatised. Only in the last issue of Resource did we learn about the zabbaleen who have been collecting waste door-to-door in Cairo since the 1940s and to whom the country has turned back, as ‘organised’ recycling hasn’t quite work out as expected.

And, away from Asia and Africa, over the Pond where the ‘bottle bills’ see financial rewards for recycling bottles and cans, it seems that the poor economic situation has encouraged more and more individuals from across the social boundaries to do a little informal recycling of their own. Kevin Drew, Residential Recycling Coordinator at San Fransico’s environmental department reports: “It used to be the homeless and the really disaffected and little old Asian ladies but now organised gangs drive around the streets with trucks... It used to be marginalised, but now middle class families are turning to it.” With a ‘trunk’ full of recyclables earning up to US$100, it is easy to see why.

The situation means you never see bottles and cans strewn across the land, but not everyone is pleased. Bob Besso, recycling manager at Recology, San Fransisco’s official waste collector, says his company loses at least $5 million a year to the scavengers. “These people are poachers and are stealing a commodity. Not one container on the streets of San Francisco doesn’t get opened between 8pm when it’s left out on the street by the householder and 8am in the morning when it’s collected by our trucks.

“Scavengers are creaming the crop, taking the most valuable materials and leaving us the rest. It’s parasitic and is the Achilles heel of California’s bottle and recycling laws. They should be scrapped. What went from a consumer law turned into a poachers’ opportunity law.”

Back in the UK, the guys I approached to talk to about their activities for this article declined to comment, yet they all intonated with shrugs of their shoulders that they were “doing nothing wrong”, passing their wares onto the ‘metal man’ for reuse. However, the Environment Agency (EA) isn’t so nonchalant. Rules state that anyone who is ‘transporting waste for profit within the UK’ needs a waste carrier’s licence. In the grand scheme of waste carriers, the rag and bone man is actually classed as ‘upper tier’ and to register as one currently costs £154 the first year, £105 a year thereafter. ‘Lower tier’ trades include carpet fitters, electricians, plumbers and tyre fitters, for whom registration is free.

The rag and bone man’s classification in the upper tier in relation to risk is certainly justifiable. As highlighted in other countries where informal recycling is prolific, ‘recycling’ of metal containers picked up as scrap can be dangerous. In France, Roma children are suffering lead poisoning as they dismantle potentially toxic e-waste for aluminium, copper, lead and iron for resale. There have been a number of reports of metal recycling accidents even in formal set ups, including one in California last year when an employee cut into an unlabelled tank causing an explosive release of chlorine gas, injuring 23 people.

The EA’s Senior Media Officer Scarlett Elworthy is keen to stipulate: “If people are going to transport waste for business or to make money they need to register as a waste carrier. Not registering undercuts legitimate businesses and makes it difficult for the Environment Agency to track the movement of waste to make sure that it is disposed of correctly and ensure that the environment and people are protected.”

And indeed, there are legitimate businesses of the rag and bone ilk out there. Businesses that have developed successful models of clearing other people’s junk and are up to date with the EA’s regulations, taking the rubbish to licensed waste transfer stations and materials recovery facilities or passing them on for reuse. There’s undoubtedly money to be had in picking up people’s unwanted rubbish for free. It’s something that Any Junk founder Jason Mohr knows all about.

So, how do these licensed rag and bone men feel about their unlicensed counterparts? Mohr says: “I’m not a fan of unlicensed man and van operators taking things out of skips or people’s front gardens – it’s not theirs to take and there’s also the problem of what they do with the material they can’t sell on (i.e. flytip it).

“It is important to highlight legitimate operators and practices. Council websites should highlight the need for residents to check that a waste carrier is licensed with the Environmental Agency and businesses should always demand a waste transfer note.”

And what of flytipping? In the UK last year, there were 947,000 reported incidents that cost local authorities £46 million in clear-up fees and a further £19 million in enforcement proceedings. And while many fear, as Mohr does, that ‘cowboy’ man-and-van operators will dump what they don’t want, without some informal recyclers prowling the streets, there might be more flytipping (or at least landfilling) as people struggle to get rid of their unwanted items. The gentlemen I see don’t even bother to take the stuff they don’t want – they are simply after the raw materials – so the charge of flytipping can’t be made against them.

Indeed, Bristol City Counciller Gary Hopkins says: “The worst problem comes from the house clearance ‘man with a van’ who are not properly licensed. The informal recyclers as you describe them should generally be less problematic as they will generally only take stuff that they can use and would tend not to flytip. This seems to be concentrated on bulky waste and we are trying hard to give more information to people about other ways of disposing of recyclable items.”

No, it seems to me that these are a new breed entirely. A breed of informal recyclers making good use of the things they find, things that the everyday folks leave behind (or unattended, at least!).