Auto industry gloom crushing Japan's poor recyclers
Sunday, 28 December 2008
TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters): Thousands of miles away from Detroit, homeless people in Japan are feeling the pinch from the U.S. "Big Three" automakers' financial woes, as they now receive less cash for the aluminum cans they collect to eke a living.
Prices for aluminum, a metal used extensively in car manufacturing, have nosedived almost 60 percent since hitting records in July due to a slump in demand caused by the global economic recession, which has seen the finances of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford falter.
At home, Toyota is also forecasting its first ever consolidated operating loss due to lower demand.
The dozens of homeless collectors of Kawasaki City, just south of Tokyo, have been hit hard by these falling aluminum prices, as they now get less than half the money they used to two months ago selling cans to recycling factories.
Japan recycles more than 90 percent of aluminum cans -- one of the highest recycling rates in the world -- and the industry is worth some 45 million yen ($493,000), according to the Japan Aluminum Can Recycling Association.
Of the total 300,000 metric tons of aluminum collected every year, some 10 percent is gathered by the homeless, the association added.
Every morning, homeless people bike around Kawasaki City to snatch discarded cans left outside residences before garbage trucks arrive to pick them up.
Kazutoshi Kimura, 56, spends almost 10 hours every day on the road, collecting cans and biking for miles to trade them for cash at the aluminum recycling factories.
The former chef has collected cans for 11 years while living by the river, but says times are now tougher than ever before.
"Before I would get about 4,000 yen ($44) for the cans I collected each day and I would work four days a week. But now, I have to work every day to survive because I only get 1,800 yen ($20) for the same amount of cans," said the homeless man, adding that he's been living off cheap ramen noodles.
DIM PROSPECTS
Until October, aluminum recycling factories would buy 1 kg (2 lb) of cans collected, or about 1,000 cans, for 190 yen ($2).
Prices for aluminum, a metal used extensively in car manufacturing, have nosedived almost 60 percent since hitting records in July due to a slump in demand caused by the global economic recession, which has seen the finances of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford falter.
At home, Toyota is also forecasting its first ever consolidated operating loss due to lower demand.
The dozens of homeless collectors of Kawasaki City, just south of Tokyo, have been hit hard by these falling aluminum prices, as they now get less than half the money they used to two months ago selling cans to recycling factories.
Japan recycles more than 90 percent of aluminum cans -- one of the highest recycling rates in the world -- and the industry is worth some 45 million yen ($493,000), according to the Japan Aluminum Can Recycling Association.
Of the total 300,000 metric tons of aluminum collected every year, some 10 percent is gathered by the homeless, the association added.
Every morning, homeless people bike around Kawasaki City to snatch discarded cans left outside residences before garbage trucks arrive to pick them up.
Kazutoshi Kimura, 56, spends almost 10 hours every day on the road, collecting cans and biking for miles to trade them for cash at the aluminum recycling factories.
The former chef has collected cans for 11 years while living by the river, but says times are now tougher than ever before.
"Before I would get about 4,000 yen ($44) for the cans I collected each day and I would work four days a week. But now, I have to work every day to survive because I only get 1,800 yen ($20) for the same amount of cans," said the homeless man, adding that he's been living off cheap ramen noodles.
DIM PROSPECTS
Until October, aluminum recycling factories would buy 1 kg (2 lb) of cans collected, or about 1,000 cans, for 190 yen ($2).