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Guns seized in Boston are reborn as manhole covers
By adamg on Sun, 10/11/2015 - 11:00am
Boston Police report the guns they seize or collect are brought up to the Schnitzer Steel plant in Everett, where officers watch as they are taken apart. The company then melts down the metal components and uses them to make manhole covers.
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They left out the part
in which the shredded metal is sent to Turkey or China and melted down there.
It's really a weird world
When sending some raw material halfway across the globe in order to be processed and sent back to the origin is the most efficient way to do things...
Nothing new...
... The pig iron bars made at the Saugus Iron Works in the 1600s were mostly sent back to England for processing into nails, etc. (Nail making for any purpose than maintenance of the facility was strictly forbidden).
The old elevated Orange Line
The old elevated Orange Line metal was shipped to Japan for melting down and recycling into new beams, which were then shipped back to the U.S. and used to build a bridge in the Southwest (Arizona, I think).
Energy...
The energy required to transport the raw material is relatively low. Trucks get 5 mpg, but carry tons. Container ships get about three knots per ton of bunker fuel, but they're carrying megatons.
Per unit, the energy requirement of transporting non-perishable non-fragile is quite low. The energy required to melt and reshape metal, however, is quite high. It follows that moving the materials to a place where, due to geology, geography, and regulation, the cost of the melt and shape is lower ends up being a lower cost, so long as you've built in the necessary time to ship.
How about putting these into
How about putting these into a crate, hooking up with an international group, working out the paperwork, and sending these long-guns to the Yazidis in the ME who desperately need them to defend themselves.
Public relations ploy
All these guns are pieces of crap that have no historical or useful purpose. The real guns such as AK's and AR's are the ones that are "recycled".