Red Tape Hot Box on Scrap Happy
Here, steel production is increasing rapidly, and so are prices, which have gone up by over 30 percent. This is great news for our metallurgy, which had a lot of problems in the new capitalist reality following 1989.
The recent boom on the steel market is also a blessing for the scrap metal industry, where prices have also increased considerably over the last few months. This means higher income for the purchasing centers (skupy) that have sprung up in all parts of the country, as well as an increase in the demand for scrap metal. As a result, scrap collectors, who have also benefited from the increase in prices, are bringing virtually every metal item they come across to the aforementioned purchasing centers. They supply the buyers with such diverse things as rails, parts of phone booths, crucifixes and effigies of Christ stolen from graves, gates, manhole lids from sewers and traffic signs, and I'm not talking about those that they find on the scrap-heap. In one town in western Poland, collectors stole parts of a sluice-gate on a river, which could have spelt disaster for the town had there been floods. We can all imagine what the consequences of missing rails or even open manholes can be.
Although it's hard to excuse them, the scrap-metal collectors, many of whom live on the streets, aren't the only ones to blame. The buyers at the purchasing centers have no objections to buying rails, traffic signals, crosses, traction elements, etc. and selling them on to steelworks. This problem has even reached the Sejm, where deputies are currently working on amendments to a new refuse bill (ustawa o odpadach). The draft provides that scrap metal collectors will have to fill out special forms (with personal data) at purchasing centers, while the buyers will be required to register both the sellers and the scrap bought from them. It might sound amusing, and it's hard to imagine all this paperwork being done at the skupy, but if it stops the latest wave of theft, then I'm for it.
The recent boom on the steel market is also a blessing for the scrap metal industry, where prices have also increased considerably over the last few months. This means higher income for the purchasing centers (skupy) that have sprung up in all parts of the country, as well as an increase in the demand for scrap metal. As a result, scrap collectors, who have also benefited from the increase in prices, are bringing virtually every metal item they come across to the aforementioned purchasing centers. They supply the buyers with such diverse things as rails, parts of phone booths, crucifixes and effigies of Christ stolen from graves, gates, manhole lids from sewers and traffic signs, and I'm not talking about those that they find on the scrap-heap. In one town in western Poland, collectors stole parts of a sluice-gate on a river, which could have spelt disaster for the town had there been floods. We can all imagine what the consequences of missing rails or even open manholes can be.
Although it's hard to excuse them, the scrap-metal collectors, many of whom live on the streets, aren't the only ones to blame. The buyers at the purchasing centers have no objections to buying rails, traffic signals, crosses, traction elements, etc. and selling them on to steelworks. This problem has even reached the Sejm, where deputies are currently working on amendments to a new refuse bill (ustawa o odpadach). The draft provides that scrap metal collectors will have to fill out special forms (with personal data) at purchasing centers, while the buyers will be required to register both the sellers and the scrap bought from them. It might sound amusing, and it's hard to imagine all this paperwork being done at the skupy, but if it stops the latest wave of theft, then I'm for it.
