Do you have a derelict vehicle taking up space on the street in front of your house or an old fridge or stove sitting in your backyard hosting rodents? You can get that piece of unsightly junk out of the way for a small fee if you call the recyclers to come get it out of your way. If it’s your vehicle taking up space on the street, paying that small fee could save you from paying more if the Belize City Council tickets you for it. In this week’s edition of Belize on Reel, News Five’s Marion Ali looks at the metal recycling business that a woman invested in over two decades ago and how that business has helped to educate her children. Here’s that report.
These pieces of old metal junk are being loaded to be carted away from this compound on the George Price Highway. The guys here at Rojas Recycling Metals at mile two have been doing this for the past twenty-five years. It’s a dirty and risky job that pays little, but it’s a job that needs to get done to make open spaces more aesthetically pleasing.
Fred Bowen, Employee, Rojas Recycling Metals
“People usually come and they say, “Hey, we got a car, the city is complaining about the cars in front of the yard and the street.” You notice there’s a lot of old cars around Belize, and a lot of old stoves and stuff on the streets, so people come and ask us to move it.”
We met Fred Bowen at Rojas Recycling Metals, but he also collects junk metals on his own time from mechanics, cuts them up and takes it to the junkyard. That is the recycling compound, and its owner is actually a woman. Yecenia Rojas invested in Rojas Recycling twenty-five years ago when she and her husband relocated from Orange Walk to Belize City. She said they used to work in the same industry, picking up scrap metal in Orange Walk, and she decided to invest in the same type of business here in the old capital. In the initial days, she said, it was only her and her husband at the helm, with the minimal investment of an old truck and a few hundred dollars.
Yecenia Rojas, Owner, Rojas Recycling Metals
“We bought a little truck, and then we started to buy tools, and well, at the beginning we didn’t have any workers, so it was my husband and I that used to, while I’m cleaning, he goes and gets some material, bring it, and so both of us started to work by ourselves. I guess that we started with about, maybe about $600 with that we started it.”
Marion Ali
What did you invest in that?
“In materials – cutters – different little things there that we need to start to work. I deal mostly with aluminum, copper, and bronze. Those are mine, but then the other things, well, he’s the one that know to select the material because he knows different types of irons that I don’t know.”
The business is unconventional in Belize for a woman, but Yecenia says it was what paid the college fees for her three children.
“I’m proud of myself and my husband because we paid our children career, which our oldest daughter is a doctor right now. Yes, we have a networking engineer son, and the other one is also at the university out of the country, so.”
Marion Ali
“You did that with the recycling business?”
“Yes.”
The business, like everything else, has its downside. Exportation to Mexico slows down when the price dips. That explains the heaps of metal that are currently at the compound at this time. Exportation has not been as frequent as citizens taking their old fridges and stoves to the junkyard.
“Material, sometimes we just take it out like once a month. And it’s just a little, it’s not much that we win of it. We sell them until when it reach to us. Price that we can win a little bit of the money that we invested in. Because if the price gets down in Mexico, well, actually we’re losing.”
The company still tries to keep the few workmen they have on board employed, even when the business slows to a halt. They engage in packing the bigger pieces into the pile and cleaning the smaller pieces, like old copper wiring.
“He is cleaning the copper. They burn the wires and clean off all the ends of the wires. So it has to be clean, clean. No other material should be on the copper. So that’s what he’s doing over there. He’s cleaning the copper.”
Marion Ali
So you’re taking off what off?”
“The little tips on the end, like the drums and the little tips off the end. It can’t be mixed; it’s got to be copper only.”
Marion Ali
“What do you look for?”
“Quality, that it needs to be, they have first class and second class in copper. First class in, especially in copper is the one that it’s peeled, and the second class, the one that is burnt. So, each one has different prices.”
The Belize City Council takes derelict vehicles off the streets and disposes of them at the recycling station after properly informing the owners and giving them two days to move them.
