For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But, for many, this is a dangerous way of earning a living. With scrap now being the largest export category from the US to China, the sheer scale of this global trade has not yet been clearly identified or analysed. Combining fine-grained ethnographic analysis with overviews of international material flows, Economies of Recycling radically changes the way we understand global and local economies as well as the new social relations and identities created by recycling processes.

This booklet summarizes the first two reports of the Global Metals Flows Group. The full reports are also available in the accompanying CD-Rom. The first report provides from a global perspective, the best scientific information available on the quantity of metal stocks in the world and the second report makes available to governments and industry the relevant baseline information on metal recycling rates, also at a global scale, to foster recycling and make more intelligent and targeted decisions on metals management worldwide.