Scrap Metal Recycling

What I’ve Learned Taking Scrap Metal to the Yard

I started collecting scrap metal about three years ago after helping my uncle clear out his workshop. He’d been a mechanic for decades and the amount of old parts, broken tools, and random bits of metal was honestly ridiculous. Someone mentioned we could take it all to a scrap yard instead of hiring a skip, and that’s how it started. Now I’ve got a system going, and whilst it’s not making me rich, I’ve learned quite a bit about what’s actually worth saving and what’s just taking up space.

The first time I rocked up to the scrap yard with my van loaded, I had everything mixed together. Steel, copper, aluminium, all just chucked in the back. The bloke at the weighbridge looked at me like I was daft and asked if I’d sorted anything. I hadn’t, obviously. That cost me because mixed scrap pays terribly compared to separated metals. He was decent about it though, explained a few things whilst I was there. That’s the thing about scrap yards – some of them can be a bit rough around the edges, but most people are actually quite helpful if you’re not being a nuisance.

Scrap Metal Recycling

Steel is what most people deal with because it’s absolutely everywhere. Old appliances, garden furniture that’s rusted through, bits of old sheds, car parts. The price moves around more than you’d expect. I’ve seen it go from about £80 per tonne to over £200, depending on what’s happening with construction and manufacturing. Right now it’s somewhere around £120-140 in my area, though that changes monthly. A van full of steel might get you thirty or forty quid if it’s a decent load. Not brilliant money, but better than paying the council to take it away.

Where it gets more interesting is the non-ferrous stuff. Copper is obviously the main one everyone knows about. Clean copper wire or pipe can fetch £6 to £8 per kilo, sometimes more depending on the yard and the current market. I stripped out some old central heating pipework from a renovation job last year and walked away with nearly £300. The key word there is “clean” though. If your copper’s still got solder attached, or it’s mixed with brass fittings, or there’s insulation still on the wire, you’re getting significantly less. Some people try burning the insulation off cable, but that’s illegal and the yards won’t touch it anyway. They can tell.

Aluminium is a bit odd because there are different grades and honestly I still don’t fully understand all of them. You’ve got cast aluminium, which is what a lot of car parts and old lawn mower decks are made from. Then there’s sheet aluminium from things like window frames and guttering. The cast stuff pays better, usually around £1 to £1.50 per kilo. Sheet aluminium is less, maybe 60p to £1. Aluminium cans are basically worthless unless you’ve got massive quantities. I tried saving them for a while and gave up – too much hassle for what you get.

Brass is worth looking out for. Old plumbing fittings, taps, door handles, that sort of thing. It pays somewhere between copper and aluminium, maybe £4 to £5 per kilo. The annoying thing with brass is it often comes attached to other metals, so you end up spending ages taking things apart. Whether that’s worth your time depends on how much you’ve got and how skint you are, I suppose.

One thing I didn’t realise at first is that not all scrap yards are the same. The prices can vary quite a bit between them, and some are much pickier about what they’ll accept. There’s one near me that pays slightly less but they’re easy to deal with and they’ll take pretty much anything metal. Another one pays better for copper but they’re awkward about mixed loads and the bloke who runs the weighbridge has a proper attitude problem. I still go there if I’ve got a decent amount of clean copper, but for general scrap I use the easier place.

You also need to think about petrol costs. If you’re driving twenty miles to a yard that pays 50p more per kilo, you might not actually be better off once you’ve factored in fuel. I learned that one the hard way. Now I tend to stockpile stuff until I’ve got a proper van load, then make one trip rather than multiple smaller ones. The downside is my garage looks like a recycling centre half the time, which my partner absolutely loves.

Some metals aren’t worth bothering with unless you happen across them. Lead used to be good money but there’s so much regulation around it now that a lot of yards won’t even take it. Stainless steel pays a bit more than regular steel, but not enough that I’d go out of my way for it. Zinc and tin aren’t things you come across much anyway.

The other thing worth mentioning is that scrap prices are tied to global commodity markets, which means they can shift quite suddenly. When there was all that trouble with China’s economy a while back, scrap prices dropped noticeably for months. During COVID they were all over the place. There’s not much you can do about it except maybe wait if prices are particularly bad, but if you’re just clearing stuff out you can’t really time the market.

I’ve also noticed that yards are getting stricter about where metal comes from. They want to see ID now, and they’re not supposed to pay cash anymore – it all has to go through bank transfer. That’s because of metal theft, which apparently got really bad a few years ago. Makes sense, but it does mean you can’t just roll up anonymously anymore.

Is it worth doing? Depends what you mean by worth it. If you’ve got scrap metal sitting around anyway, then absolutely yes. If you’re thinking of driving around looking for scrap to make serious money, probably not unless you’re doing it properly as a business. For me it’s somewhere in between – I do a bit of renovation work, so I end up with scrap anyway. Taking it to the yard gets me a bit of cash and keeps it out of landfill, which seems sensible enough.

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