Local communities and recycling firms are cleaning up from the booming Chinese economy's seemingly insatiable demand for trash.

From cardboard to scrap metal, commodities-hungry China is buying just about anything it can get to feed its economy.

One of the hot items is simply paper - and specifically corrugated cardboard, which is selling at $90 a ton, a commodity China needs to package items it plans to export to the United State.

``Their appetite is so huge, it's driving up prices,'' said Gordon Martin, supervisor of waste disposal and recycling for the Wellesley Department of Public Works.

Wellesley is making more than $300,000 a year from its recycling operations, Martin said.

Wellesley is unusual in that it sells recycled material directly to shippers, cleaning and baling paper at its recycling facility in the toney western suburb.

But other cities are making a buck too, selling to transfer companies that ship materials overseas.

Boston is on target to make 20 percent more this fiscal year in its sale of paper material to the FCR recycling facility in Charleston.

Last fiscal year, the city was paid about $508,000 for newspapers, magazines and cardboard. So far this fiscal year, the city has sold $517,000 in paper trash, with two months to go in the fiscal year, said Joe Casazza, commissioner of Boston's Department of Public Works.

``Shippers are taking everything and anything to send to China,'' Casazza said.

Not just communities are profiting. ``It's found money, really,'' said John Fitzgerald, site manager for Brockton's Champion City, a construction demolition debris company. The company, which specializes in selling scrap metal, said light iron used to sell for about $25 a ton only a few years ago. The price today: $85 a ton.

Chip Laffey, superintendent of solid waste and recycling for Needham, said the community used to just give away paper products to recyling firms, as long as they didn't charge tipping and transformation fees. A year ago, Needham renegotiated the countract - for $10 a ton for cardboard and other paper material, bringing in $40,000 a year.

Laffey said a downside to the boom is that local paper companies are hurting because the Chinese are outbidding them for scrap pulp.

Source: bostonherald.com