Fwd: leiderman: scrap city: rebar-for-brains department
Leon David
From: <leid...@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 6:29 PM
Subject: leiderman: scrap city: rebar-for-brains department
To: corb...@webster.edu
dear Readers:
thanks to a colleague for this article from today's Wall Street
Journal. funny, I thought there was a state of emergency Haiti, where
"all hands on deck" were needed to rebuild the country and all
available materials were needed to make places to live and equipment
to survive. therefore, why would the Haitian government permit any
scrap materials, especially steel, to leave the country? instead, why
shouldn't it attract a couple of steel companies or build one of its
own, hire jobless craftspeople and steelworkers to start turning out
value-added products with all the scrap that comes out of earthquake
rubble? what is it waiting for?
especially with steel prices down, why should Haitians, the Diaspora,
international donors, Clinton, Bush and all the rest condone
supporting China's economy when it's Haiti's economy that's in the
proverbial latrine?
thank you,
Stuart Leiderman
leid...@mindspring.com
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(Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2010)
Haiti's Rubble Holds Key to Survival, as Scrap-Metal Economy Soars
By JOSE DE CORDOBA
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— From the rubble left by January's devastating
earthquake, a new industry has been born: the recycling of steel
construction rods dug out from under the debris for sale to China.
Every day, a long line of one-man wheelbarrows, three-man wooden
carts, beat-up Haitian minibuses and big trucks line up on the grounds
of Haiti Recycling, one of three such private companies operating
here. The dilapidated vehicles carry tons of rebar, as the steel rods
that reinforce concrete are known.
Haiti Recycling is the end of the line for the rebar pulled from
wrecked buildings throughout the city by thousands of workers wielding
sledgehammers and hacksaws. Stripped of concrete, carefully weighed
and then sold and resold, the rebar eventually reaches this plant on
the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where it will be sent on containers
to China and other Asian destinations.
"Rebar used to be only 5% of the mix, but now it's up to 40%" of a
haul that also includes destroyed cars, says Stephan Sajous, the
marketing manager of family-owned Haiti Recycling. Mr. Sajous says the
company sends out four containers of scrap steel every day, most to
China. He estimates that between his company and two other recycling
plants, Haiti yearly sends upwards of $20 million of recycled steel to
China, India, Thailand and Taiwan. That sum is about two-thirds the
total value of Haiti's exports of mangoes, one of its top products.
The recycling industry is providing jobs to thousands of Haitians
struggling for daily survival in the aftermath of the quake, which
killed more than 200,000 and left more than a million homeless. Mr.
Sajous estimates that he pays about $30,000 a day in cash to about 700
suppliers.
But the process of bringing the metal to his plant has a multiplier
affect, providing work for many—from the workers who pry the rebar out
of the devastated houses, to the merchants who then buy and resell the
steel, to the people who rent wheelbarrows and wooden carts to take
the steel to the plant.
The chain often starts with homeless survivors of the earthquake like
Jean Prester, 46, a former sand-quarry worker. Drenched in sweat and
wearing a cowboy hat against the sun, Mr. Prester uses his hacksaw,
one of his few remaining possessions, to cut a piece of rebar that
sticks out of a collapsed building like a twisted strand of spaghetti.
If he is lucky, he says, he will pull out as much as $14 worth.
"I'll put in on my shoulders, and sell it to whoever passes by," says
Mr. Prester, looking ghostly as he emerges from the mix of dust,
diesel fumes and smoke of smoldering garbage that passes for air in
much of Port-au-Prince.
Mr. Prester, who lost his wife in the earthquake, has entrusted the
care of two of his children to relatives, and says he is down to his
last few cents. As he saws at the iron bar, he ignores a man in a
passing car who shouts at him not to take it.
Since the earthquake, scores of development experts have been locked
in marathon meetings drawing up plans to create new industries in
Haiti. They see an economy reborn through a reinvented tourism
industry, free-trade zones and a renewed emphasis on agriculture. But
until then, thousands of Haitians will eke out a living in the rubble.
Mr. Sajous expects the rebar to be a big component of his sales for at
least the next three years. The Haitian government estimates that the
earthquake has produced some 24 million metric tons of rubble, enough
to fill five Superdomes.
Mr. Soujous's company started out as a mattress manufacturer, but ran
into competition from second-hand mattresses brought in by tramp
steamers from Miami. So he decided to get into the recycling business
himself in 1986.
He started with brass and aluminum. Steel had scant value. But the
rise of China and other Asian countries as manufacturing powers made
steel a valuable commodity. Before the recession struck, scrap steel
was selling for as much as $400 per metric ton (about $440 per short
ton). World steel prices are now down to around $250 a metric ton. Mr.
Soujous says he pays his providers $175 a ton. He buys amounts ranging
from a few hundred pounds or less that a small wheelbarrow can carry
to truck loads of upwards of 10 tons.
"The wooden cart guys who brings in 300 kilos [660 pounds] of rebar
will go home with $50— that's 10 times the minimum wage," he says. But
that sum typically doesn't include transport costs. Small suppliers
most often hire converted Haitian minivans, known as Tap Taps, or
wheelbarrows for the job.
One recent morning, Jean Antoine, 35, was patiently waiting in line to
weigh his haul. Mr. Antoine, who lives in the slum of Cité Soleil, had
pushed about 165 pounds of rebar in a wheelbarrow the four miles from
his house to the plant. The work provides him with an income of about
$50 a week, which he uses to support eight people. "It pays the rent,
and the school for the kids," he says.
Outside the plant, Dumas Louis, 30, a mason who is now living in a
makeshift tarp shelter on the street, is drenched in sweat as he loads
piles of rebar onto a wooden cart he will take inside the plant. "It's
not a good job," says Mr. Louis. "If I could get another, I'd quit
right now."
- - - - - - -
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