Business4 min read
3 Signs Your Site Is Losing Money on Scrap Metal
Skips full of steel, mixed metal bins, offcuts in general waste — the most common ways Perth sites leak scrap value, and how to fix each one.
Walk any construction site, workshop or factory in Perth and there's a decent chance money is leaving in the wrong bin. Scrap metal is one of the few waste streams with positive value — yet sites leak that value constantly. Here are the three signs we see most often.
1. Metal is going into general waste skips
The classic. General waste disposal costs upwards of $100 per tonne once you count bin hire and landfill levies; scrap steel pays you. Every length of stud, offcut of pipe or dead appliance in a general skip is a double loss — you're paying to throw away something a recycler would pay you for.
2. All metals share one bin
A mixed bin gets weighed at close to steel rates, even when a third of the contents is copper, brass or aluminium worth ten to forty times more per kilo. A second small bin for non-ferrous typically pays for itself in the first collection.
3. Scrap piles up until it's a problem
Stockpiles grow until someone pays overtime — or a general waste contractor — to make them disappear before an inspection or handover. Scheduled collections or an exchanged bin turns that fire-drill into a routine that earns instead of costs.
A twenty-minute site walk with our commercial team usually finds most of these. It costs nothing, and it usually ends with your scrap paying you instead of the other way around.