Scrap Metal Items at Home: What Sydney Locals Don’t Realise Counts

What items can you find at your house that no one would expect to be scrap metal?

The short answer is that there are many other, seemingly mundane, scrap metal items that are found in the average Sydney dwelling – think old kettles, broken tools, curtain rods, bed frames, exhaust fans, window frames, guttering and the metal legs under an old couch. The vast majority is recyclable and is even valuable for cash; however, most people just dump it in the general waste bin since they can’t identify it as scrap.

This is repeatedly observed throughout the Sydney building site. Even landscapers are unaware of the amount of metal content until we discover it during a demolition job at home or a garage strip-out.

The guy Who Missed a complimentary payday loan

Recently, we stripped out kitchens and laundromats for a client in the Inner West a few months ago. Before we got there, she had already placed two council skip bins with what we would have called “junk” from the garage: old fly screens, a clothes dryer that had gone wrong, a certain amount of rusted brackets, and a stack of aluminium window frames that had been installed when she renovated the house last.

Most of it had disappeared by the time we arrived. Left behind were an old gas hot water heater, some copper pipes, and as much steel off-cut as to fill one half of a trailer. Our site supervisor had done a rough estimate and informed her that she had unwittingly lost some $150-$200 worth of recyclable metal.

She wasn’t careless. He only didn’t understand what meant anything. This is the type of loss we encounter very often on residential projects, and it is one of the worst to experience: this is what this guide is about.

This book is written for the general reader.

Not all scrap metal is scrap metal! It’s not often that clean, straight pipes are found, and they are seldom painted, rusted, or hidden in a shed. These are things that people are oftentimes missing in a clean-out or a renovation job:

• Kitchen Fridges and Freezers – steel wire, copper pipes, and aluminium doors are recovered from them.
• Old Kitchens – stainless steel, copper and aluminium from old kettles, toasters, microwaves and dishwashers.
• Bathroom/Laundry – towel rail, exhaust fan, old tap, washing-machine drum.
• Furniture frames – Most furniture with a frame, including bed frames, office chairs, and couches, will have a steel or aluminium frame underneath the fabric.
• All hardware – curtain rods, hinges, door handles, broken tools such as hammers, spanners and garden shears etc.
• Remains from reno - aluminium window frames, guttering, downpipes and roofing sheets taken off in a reno project.
• Wood products that have been discarded – image boards, old door panels, scrap wood from repairs.
• Clay or composite levels – old light fittings, clay offcuts from pipe repairs, composite lights from repairs.

Most of these are on that border — not quite broken down and, therefore, not truly “scrap,” like your old car battery. That’s why they keep getting in the trash.

This is important for people who own houses in Sydney because…

Councils in Sydney have introduced new guidelines on the contents of kerbside bins, and skip bin hire by the metre isn’t inexpensive. But recycling metal is not only doing your bit for the environment—it could also help save you the cost of hiring another skip bin to clean up a renovation or to relocate some metal to the bin.

This is where a well-established house recycling metal routine will pay off. In Greater Sydney, basic loads of scrap metal will be taken from certain yards free of charge, and some pay for larger amounts of scrap, steel, copper, or aluminium. In a renovation site, it can add up quickly: Just a stripped-out kitchen can generate enough metal for a company trailer.

Clean-Outs With Scrap Metal: A Simple Guide

When it comes time for a clean-out, garage sort, or a small renovation, it helps to sort items into broad categories before deciding where to put them. For clients, a simple solution that we recommend:

• Magnetic (steel or iron) – old tools, brackets, bed frames, appliance shells (ferrous metal).
• Non-ferrous metal (Non-magnetic, and likely the higher-value material) – copper pipes, aluminium frames, brass fittings.
• Items involving some mixing or confusion – virtually any scrap yard will take these items and sort them for you; these include items with only a portion made from the metal and a portion involving wiring or motors, awkward metallics, and uncertain items.

It’s okay if you aren’t exacting about this. Even if it’s a hackisquette — a simple sort — “a magnet does not stick to it or not,” you avoid throwing away something with value and will make your load easy to clean and brittle for the scrap yard.

When It’s Worth Calling In a Professional

Sorting is easy enough if it’s a single old kettle or a broken toaster. However, renovations, deceased estate clean-outs and complete strip-outs of the property are a different matter. Forced into haste, it is often difficult to sort the recyclables out amongst the general waste, plasterboard and the insulation materials.

We don’t treat all items that we pull down or demolish as if they are one waste stream – we routinely remove recyclable metal on our jobs. It’s been an established practice for many years in both residential and commercial construction projects, and will help many customers save money and landfill space on a regular basis — at times benefiting customers’ strip-out costs on its own.

Final Thoughts

Even if people don’t realise it, most homes also contain more recoverable metal in the form of old, damaged appliances and furniture, as well as debris left over from home improvements. It just takes a little longer to sort it out before your skip bin fills up again (and who knows, it may be a chance for your builder to do a strip-out too!). If you are having any type of works carried out within your company, whether it be a renovation, demolition or the full clean-out of your premises, and you are looking for any works completed appropriately, our team can be on site to guide you through the process and also help you with the disposal of the unwanted scrap metal.