reportonbusiness.com: Full metal racket

This summer, Canada’s commodity scavengers have pulled plaques and crosses off cemetery plots, cut down aluminum light poles, removed manhole covers, pillaged air conditioning systems, raided trucks full of butter, stripped copper roofing off schools and churches, siphoned gallons of gasoline, and yanked hundreds of catalytic converters from SUVs.

Even used restaurant grease has become valuable to the biodiesel industry, causing a spate of thefts.

Other thieves make off with copper wiring from homes, aluminum siding, phone booths, fire extinguishers, traffic lights, street signs, ladders and even the kitchen sink, one of which is proudly used as an ashtray in front of Mr. Spears’s trailer.

He says he stopped accepting ladders last year after he realized they were all likely stolen.