Diane McCormick at CRS

The flattened burgundy Chrysler teetered atop the conveyor. From the control booth, operator Careen Nation angled a joystick, and someone’s former pride and joy plunged under the pounding hammers of the Consolidated Scrap Resources shredder.

In three seconds, it was an ex-Chrysler.

What happens to our scrap when its usefulness has ended—all that steel, aluminum, copper, bronze, brass and electronics cluttering our homes and garages?

In Harrisburg, they might come to a scrapyard or electronics recycler. The city’s scrap economy creates jobs, supplies manufacturers with recycled materials, and diverts our discards, from aluminum cans to shopping malls, away from landfills.

Carloads & Truckloads

The stretch of Harrisburg’s 7th Street corridor north of Maclay Street is lined with recyclers accepting steel, aluminum, paper and other materials.

Below Maclay, on North Cameron Street, the flagship yard of Consolidated Scrap Resources is now in its fourth generation of Abrams family ownership.

Rail cars bringing scrap in or hauling it out still run directly into the 28-acre, circa-1907 Harrisburg yard. So do tractor trailers from industrial and government clients responsibly discarding their waste. Homeowners in cars haul old water tanks. Pickup trucks arrive filled with trash-day metal.

“It helps pay all those extra bills that need to be paid,” said Melissa Hershman, of Harrisburg, whose husband, Jim, began trash-day collecting to augment his Social Security retirement payments.

In 2024, Pennsylvania’s scrap industry generated $7.1 billion in economic activity, according to the Recycled Materials Association. In the 10th congressional district spanning much of Dauphin, Cumberland and York counties, the industry generated $450.7 million and created 1,673 jobs.

CSR collects cardboard and some plastics, but its bread and butter is metals—steel, copper, aluminum, cast iron and more.

One Maryland police department brings its confiscated weapons to be destroyed, certifiably and under the watch of state troopers. Municipal governments bring the loads generated by residents who use drop-off recycling centers.

“It doesn’t end up in the landfill,” said CSR Vice President of Operations Steve Marcus.

Even the plastics, upholstery and other non-metals that are integral to every car, appliance or golf club sent for recycling are separated during processing and converted into lint-like piles called “fluff,” used as a soil alternative for covering landfills.

“We want to get as much squeal out of the pig as we can,” Marcus said.

The Shredder

As Marcus gave me a tour of the CSR yard, we passed the “peddler pile,” soaring with sinks, bathtubs, water heaters and hubcaps from small-load customers.

I commented on another pile, full of reddish steel beams. A demolished bridge, maybe?

“The Harrisburg Mall,” Marcus said. “We got all the scrap from the Harrisburg Mall.”

There goes that Orange Julius I remember from 1994.

But CSR’s acceptance of materials for resale to industry—steel melted into more steel, aluminum cans converted back into cans—is just the beginning. Those clients write exacting specs for their purchases, suited to their own manufacturing processes and shipping needs.

So, scrapyard becomes processor. Giant steel is torched and pummeled into fist-sized “frag” for efficient melting. Smashed cans are wrapped into efficient, stackable bales.

At CSR, the journey begins with the shredder. When they told me about it, I pictured something like a drive-thru car wash.

Then we walked the yard, and I gasped at the beast standing beyond sight of the street. Its towers, winding conveyors and sheds reminded me of the hulking coal breaker in my dad’s Northeast PA hometown.

This behemoth has its own electrical substation, powering a system so muscular and intricate that momentum keeps it going for 30 minutes after shutdown each day.

“There are definitely larger scrapyards,” said Marcus, a 35-year veteran of the business. “There are definitely smaller scrapyards. When we put our shredder in, one of the parameters that made us decide the size of the shredder was what we felt, in the area, was enough scrap to support it.”

After the shredder machinery pounds the bejesus out of the mixed metals fed to it, the pieces travel to the first intersection of conveyors, where giant rotating magnets grab the ferrous steel and push it forward.

The non-ferrous pieces drop to a belt below, where the magic of an eddy current separates aluminum by providing a charge that convinces it to leap, salmon-like, off the belt’s end.

As steel makes its way to conversion into frag, the “last line of defense” constitutes CSR employees deftly picking any remaining dirt, trash or undesirable materials from a belt whizzing by.

“Copper is a no-no when it comes to steel mills,” Marcus said. “You put too much copper into an electric furnace, and it’ll blow the heat. It’ll ruin the whole load. Our product is clean and has very little copper.”

Electronics Equation

In an Allison Hill garage, a forklift operator hoisted stacks of televisions—75-inchers, still boxed. Precision Recyclers had just received three truckloads of the damaged TVs.

Now, they were destined for dismantling. Parts with market value, such as circuit boards, would be sold online. The remaining metals were destined for return to the supply chain, sold by the pound and shipped to refiners.

John Sposit founded Precision Recyclers in 2017 when he learned that local school districts and businesses lacked the capacity or outlets to properly manage their electronic discards.

“It was mind-boggling to me how they throw things away, and there were no other competition or other businesses doing similar things in the area,” said Sposit, an accountant and U.S. Army veteran who had been in the book resale business.

While Dauphin County residents have free disposal of their electronics and appliances at the county recycling center, the waste stream never stops flowing, and other free options are scarce.

Precision Recyclers helps fill the gap. Residents can bring their electronics—essentially, anything that plugs in—for free disposal. Businesses and government agencies are assured legally compliant disposal of their outdated or unused equipment. Some might be charged a fee, depending on labor or processing costs, but the firm has never charged school districts, Sposit said.

Depending on condition and age, Precision Recyclers might refurbish and donate its usable items to local organizations or tear them down for parts.

“We encourage people to dispose of their things properly because we follow state and federal law, and we educate those around us to try to do the same thing,” said Recycling Manager Cynthia Craig.

With its Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection certification, Precision Recyclers can provide data destruction for keepers of sensitive information. In most cases, the hard drive goes under a specialty crusher.

“Crushing is the most secure process because you’re not reusing the hard drive,” said Sposit.

Old electronics left to languish can be dangerous, as batteries leak and create fire hazards.

“If you have a fire, it’s going to destroy your buildings,” said Craig. “We want to educate people to not just let these things build up.”

So, about those laptops stacked in my closet, supposedly waiting for the day when I preserve my decades of research and writing?

“Transfer it to a portable disk, and get rid of the computers,” Craig said.

Education and partnerships drive the Precision Recyclers mission, she added. The firm participates in community events. Camp Curtin YMCA and The Bridge host drop-off sites for residents. Neighborhood groups can bring in the items collected from electronics clean-up events.

Some schools or businesses receive donations of refurbished machines, such as 3-D printers.

“We can’t necessarily write them a check, but we can help with items they need,” Craig said.

Customer Relationships

Almost daily, the Hershmans pull onto a CSR scale with a Dodge Ram’s load of discards— from trash days, from neighbors, from people who flag them down.

“People are really nice,” said Melissa Hershman. “They thank you for taking the stuff because they don’t know what to do with it.”

A typical load of about 1,000 pounds can earn $100. The work can be strenuous, but Hershman said that her husband is “strong as a bull.”

The nonprofit Recycle Bicycle has been taking its scrap to CSR “forever,” said founder Ross Willard. Steel gets only pennies per pound, but recycling is “the right thing to do,” he said.

As for aluminum, “now we’re talking some bucks.” When Boy Scouts volunteer, he’ll assign them to cutting the alloy rims off unredeemable bikes.

“You give them a pair of bolt cutters, and they go wild,” Willard said. “They love destroying stuff.”

Marcus easily got approval to pay Willard above-market rates for Recycle Bicycle’s scrap, as a contribution toward its mission of changing lives through free, refurbished transportation.

Scrapping offers “a benefit to humanity,” Marcus said. From recycling glossy magazines for Ronald McDonald House fundraisers to offering the Harrisburg Fire Bureau jaws-of-life training on scrap cars, “the main thing is that we’re supporting the community,” he said. “There’s a place that people can bring their recycled goods. We try to be involved with the community as much as possible. It’s a win-win situation.”

Melissa Hershman knows that scrapping serves a higher purpose.

“Instead of it going to a landfill or sitting in somebody’s backyard rusting away and going into the ground, it’s good for the environment, good for us, good for CSR,” she said.

Consolidated Scrap Resources is located at 1616 N. Cameron St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.consolidatedscrap.com.

Precision Recyclers is located at 104 S. 18 St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.precisionrecyclers.com. Dropoff accepted Monday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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