It’s the oldest part of the UK’s recycling sector: long before kerbside collections, steel and aluminium were being reused as scrap. It’s also one of the largest: the metal industry is worth over £5.6 billion to the British economy each year, with 5.5 million tonnes of iron and stainless steel scrap being supplied to domestic steelworks and foundries and more than 7.4 million tonnes exported. For nonferrous material (aluminium, copper, brass, etc) that export figure is over 1.5 million tonnes.

The key figure in this international supply chain is the metal recycler, of which there are over 3,500 registered with the Environment Agency alone. Yet the humble scrap dealer has long had to battle against a poor public image. Old clichés of dodgy geezers with scary guard dogs die hard, and these spectres haven’t exactly been banished by many dealers’ alleged complicity in the recent rise in metal thefts. We’ve all seen the headlines of churches, railways and even cemeteries being robbed, and whilst it’s easy to roll an eye at the sensationalised reporting, there’s no doubt that it has had a devastating effect on some communities and people’s lives. British Transport Police (BTP) reported a 70 per cent rise in railway cable theft in the year to March 2011, causing the cancellation or delay of some 35,000 national rail services. And, BT claims it will spend over 90,400 hours dealing with the impact of metal thefts in this year alone. The reasons behind these alarming crime stats aren’t hard to locate. Metal prices have risen over a long period, hitting a peak at the end of the long boom in 2007-08 and fluctuating wildly since. In the 10 years to 2011, copper’s price increased by 527 per cent, lead’s by 447 per cent and tin’s by 524 per cent. Much of this has been due to the large demand from China, India and other developing economies for raw materials. Compared to the risky business of burgling a domestic property, stealing metal and converting it into cash has become too easy an option for criminals. Many doubtless see it as a ‘victimless’ crime.

As is so often the case, a wave of headlines has elicited an official response. In January, a Private Member’s Bill to ban scrap yards from making cash payments was rejected by Parliament. But Home Secretary Teresa May wasted little time in announcing that the government would be introducing a similar ban under amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill currently going through Parliament.

At the same time, the government has set up a new £5 million-funded Metal Theft Task Force, a multi-agency project that it hopes will get to the bottom of the problem. One of the Task Force’s first moves was to launch the alarmingly-named ‘Operation Tornado’ earlier this year. This is a voluntary scheme in three areas in the North East (Northumbria, Durham and Cleveland), where scrap yards are encouraged to introduce enhanced identification procedures for their customers and put in CCTV cameras. The idea is that these measures make it more difficult to sell stolen metal or at least increase the risk of doing so. Some 79 per cent of the region’s scrap yards have taken part in the scheme, and according to Detective Superintendent John McBride of the BTP who heads the task force, the interim results show that there has been a “significant reduction” in metal theft in the region.

Such has been Tornado’s success that it is being rolled out gradually throughout the country. Sharing intelligence with the Environment Agency and the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA), the BTP aims to build up a picture of the country’s scrap yards whilst at the same time adopting a more robust approach to those they suspect have handled stolen metal, according to McBride. “We are going to visit all UK scrap yards, or at least the ones we know of, and we will adopt a risk-based strategy based on a red-amber-green system. “There’ll be a number of elements that contribute to that and whether you end up in red or amber or green. Say if you’ve got a history of accepting stolen metal you’ll be assessed as a red scrap dealer and we’ll bring all the powers, the EA and taxman to bear on you. Others with a clean record may have more light touch regulation. I think one of the things that will flush the illegitimate ones out quite quickly is through the take up of the Tornado tactics.”

The scrap industry itself has been broadly supportive of such a crackdown. Where they diverge from the government’s plans is on the question of a cash ban. Ian Hetherington, Director General of the BMRA stated that the industry body was against such a move: “Banning the procurement of scrap metal for cash, we think is ill timed and misplaced and as it’s drafted has numerous loopholes that make it in serious danger of driving much of the legitimate trade underground.”

The most glaring loophole is the fact that under the proposed legislation itinerant scrap dealers would be exempt from any cash ban. Not surprisingly, many legitimate traders fear that a percentage of their trade will end up on the black market or simply disappear. Neil Woodall is Commercial Manager of Mason Metals, a Dudley-based dealer that employs 27 people: “I feel that the cash payment part has been a very big driver in the success of metal recycling. The fact that it’s cash makes it available to all. We do very many multiple low-value transactions. On one day last year we counted that 67 per cent were under £100 and 95 per cent were under £1,000. “I think it’s going to affect metal recycling as a whole, because those people are going to forget it, aren’t they? It’s not going to be worth it, and it wouldn’t be worth it for us to pay them electronically. Some might go elsewhere, possibly to itinerant traders, but then you’ll lose that traceability.”

Unless another loophole is added, the cash ban would also appear to end the ‘Cash For Cans’ programmes that are dotted round the country. An estimated 10 per cent of recycled aluminium cans are collected via these schemes. In a statement, Alupro (the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation) said that it “urged the government to consider an exemption. A complete cash ban would have a significant negative impact upon the volumes of cans collected, reducing the recycling rate for drinks cans, something the government is committed to improving.”

Perhaps before the bill is passed it might be worthwhile for policy makers to look across the Channel to see how a cash ban affected the French market. This is the journey Detective Superintendent McBride undertook earlier this year, speaking to members of Federec (the French Recycling Federation). “They said that reported metal thefts were down 50 per cent but across the country overall trade was down by 30 per cent with some yards reporting a reduction of 80 per cent. Those last ones did tend to be near the Belgian border – obviously if people can get cash there they’ll just nip over there instead.”

What is certain is that unless a compromise can be found, many of our legitimate, smallscale metal recyclers – the people the UK partly depends on to meet its EU targets – face an uncertain future. “We will lose trade”, warns Neil Woodall. “And I do feel we’re being vilified. When a house is burgled, the burglar is the main villain of the piece, whereas here it seems to be the scrap metal dealer is to blame, rather than the actual criminal.”