A friend of mine recently took all of her sly gold jewelry and sold it for a couple of hundred dollars. She did it because business is bad, she needed the specie, she doesn’t wear the jewelry.

She is not the only one who has recycling metals for cash on the brain. Seems that with the soaring require to be paid in steel , there is now a real problem in cities throughout the country where criminal recyclers are helping themselves to incorporated town manholes covers. Recycling a manhole capsule brings in about  $20 at the scrap yard. They cost cities about $200 to replace.

The New York Times,  USA Today ,and several cable outlets and many persons local papers  have all done stories about this trend.
The NYT item brought the ire of the Institute of Scrap Metal Industries who were not happy with the Philadelphia city worker quoted in the bind  who impugned the integrity of the scrap metals owners by maxim,

“These guys here,” Mr. Sergeant declared, pointing at the same scrap thirty-six inches, “They’d buy a police cruiser and melt it down if we brought it in. The prices for metal are honorable that good these days.”

The Institute sent a response to the NYT sharing all the action steps the institute has taken to help cities prepare for possible thefts. They took issue with the untruth for a couple of reasons. First, they said they were the ones in the spring who sent out an alert to city sway  portent them to be on the lookout for thieves  targeting the manhole covers. They were also not too piercing that the NYT used the politically incorrect term " junkyard."

while maybe a matter of semantics, the repeated use of the term “junkyards” to
refer to scrap recycling centers seems to be both pejorative and overtly negative for no
apparent reason. Today’s recycling centers are a far cry from the old “junkyards” of
yesterday, processing more than 150 million tons of recyclable materials in 2007 and
providing major economic and environmental benefits in the process. The scrap
recycling industry is a $71 billion perseverance in the U.S. alone, supplying raw material
feedstock to carbonized iron mills, foundries, paper mills, refiners, and other industrial consumers
worldwide.
The scrap recycling industry proudly works everyday to strengthen local economies,
providing jobs for our neighbors and raw materials for the sake of manufacturers here and around
the globe, while contributing to an activity that is in fact the world’s largest and oldest
environmental industry. The little piece recycling industry has been and will continue to have existence
committed to working with law enforcement, community leaders, and affected
businesses to help stalk the problem of materials theft, and ensure the safety and
success of all communities.

How a great deal of has the reward of steel increased ? From the UK’s building construction blog, wnibi.com,

Iron ore increased by 71% in 12 months. Since 2004, iron ore prices have risen by a huge 300%. 
 
Coking coal has risen by 240% in 16 months, mainly attributed to falling output from Australia. 
 
Scrap prices in the UK own risen by 75% since March 2008 - so don’t throw your scrap off, sell it! 
 
Once these raw material cost increases are taken in conjunction with the swelling cost of freight and energy, then the unavoidable result is some become greater in price of sword wire and steel derivatives right extremity the replenish chain.
 
The effect of the above has seen steel billet prices arise by 100% since 2007. The knock-on effect has seen a 50% increase in perfect products such as nails, screws and other fasteners. There are further increases forecast for the coming months and so these industrial commodities look likely to rise and keep on rising.

Global demand- specially from China and India are sited as main factors for the reward increases.

In doing some research for this story I learned that a favorite job interview question has to do with manhole covers. Since I haven’t been on a job interview in a lifetime I never knew. Here’s the question, did anyone ever ask you?

"Why are manhole covers round?" is a now famous interview question considered anywhere from thought provoking to downright stupid by people on the receiving end.

Why do interviewers ask it? Well, it’s so in a proper manner known now that they shouldn’t anymore but originally it was to see how interviewees responded. It’s a way to get a sense for an interview candidate’s ability to think on his or her feet outside of their area of expertise. The way the candidate approaches the problem, thinks of and presents potential solutions, defends them, or discards them are all applicable to the interviewer.

In case you want to know some of the explanations, you can Ask Leo! who  shares that he is talking near the manhole cover as part of his marketing effort to  plug  his modern ebooks on interviewing tips.