In Defense of Scrap Culture

By DON ROLLINS

In “Holler,” her directorial film debut from 2021, Nicole Riegel takes her audiences on a trip through a dire corner of “scrap” culture. Caught up in the various mazes of small-town Appalachian poverty, most of her central characters are in one way or another dependent on salvaging metals for recycling: Scrapping and scrappers are rarely off screen.

“Holler” was almost entirely shot here in Jackson, Ohio — most scenes within a mile radius of where I write. When the film came to the only local theater, several prominent business owners and chamber of commerce types pitched some very public fits . Cries of “But that’s not our town, not our people!” hit the local paper. Although born and raised here, Riegel had betrayed the image of a small town with bigger plans than broken appliances strapped to a flatbed. She’d gone negative.

But scrap culture does exist, here and just about anyplace where metals can be harvested, sold and repurposed. In 2021 roughly 14,000 US individual and commercial metal recyclers processed an estimated 4.3 trillion tons of steel, aluminum, copper, iron, silver, gold and tin. To scrap is to participate in a near-global, economically intertwined industry. So what may look local turns out to be anything but.

Yet as the local response to “Holler” would indicate, this big-picture understanding of scrap culture is probably lost on non-scrappers. Stereotypes of a lazy, shiftless, dirty underclass abound: Scrappers are parasitic bottomfeeders, living off what the rest of us throw away. I doubt such harsh judgment is confined to these foothills.

Riegel’s film doesn’t set out to defend scrap culture on the lofty basis of international trade; rather it localizes, then humanizes even some scrappers that blur if not cross legal lines to ease their existence, Poverty is not an excuse, but its never not a factor. Not for the grownups, not for the kids that fill the screen.

Although its been more than two years since its release — and despite all attempts to discount its content — “Holler” has staying power at the local grassroots level: Seeing anecdotal but familiar characters in familiar places was bound to surface stories about real-life scrappers. And it has.

Two that come to mind:

“Pete” is from here on the block. He’s a seasoned scrapper, which means he can’t help but notice all things metal. He doesn’t steal, doesn’t cheat despite being chronically short on his bills. What Pete does is help with worksite cleanups for whatever metals are leftover. He takes in long dead mowers, bicycles, power washers — damn near anything metal regular folk want gone. He’s known to swap out some metals for a weed trimmer or two.

Pete’s near constant metal sawing is a nuisance here on the block. Aluminum garage door tracks don’t cut themselves, and neither do iron water pipes. We tolerate the noise because we know to a person, Pete’s a working man without an office or a time clock. He’s a scrapper. Scrappers aren’t always quiet.

Meanwhile is the family with the aged but mighty Ford F-150. Two young adults, two kids who make the rounds of the tonier neighborhoods each and every Sunday evening. No one I know in those homes is interested in getting acquainted, so they just call their regular visitors “the family” — a term of endearment born of seeing children learning how to scrap before they’re even in school.

So most of the well-off time their Sunday recyclables according to the family’s rounds. My relatives and friends up that way are set on the family getting the good stuff, from cans to clawfoot tubs to bedposts. Its an unspoken covenant between the castes, and an act of caring that wouldn’t happen any other way.

Uplifting anecdotes noted, even part-time scrapping is not for the faint of heart. Injuries, weather, gas prices, broken tools, metals markets, competitors, money shortages — lots of things can and do go sideways in scrap culture. Resilience is a must, especially for small-scale scrappers.

The scrappers I know are not intentionally environmentalist. Or capitalist, for that matter. We don’t talk about the obscene conservative policies that help keep them poor. No head-to-heads over why Trump belongs in jail, not the White House. No mention of the compliments I just wrote about them — not interested.

What we talk about is the price of copper, and how to drop a gas tank on a 2012 Dodge pickup. They’re scrappers after all.

Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2023

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