At SA Recycling Terminal Island, a worker using a crane builds a 20-foot-high mountain of crushed trucks, buses and cars. They will get fed into a megashredder and “torn to nothing in a matter of seconds,” says David Brown, general manager of the steel recycling plant at the Port of Los Angeles. The scrap metal is one of the port’s most valuable exports.
The shredded steel and upholstery release toxic material such as lead, zinc and copper. The workers breathe it in. In 2018, the state brought criminal charges against the plant for polluting the sea and ground, and still monitors for compliance. Yet Brown notes that recycling steel is better for the planet than making it, which generates greenhouse gas emissions.
The plant is a microcosm of the environmental contradictions embodied by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the first and second busiest in the country. In addition to the shredding lot, huge terminals receive millions of tons of goods and barrels of fossil fuel every year…