| Ever wonder where all of our leftover planes, automobiles, boats and electronics go to once they’ve become nothing more than a lifeless husk of plastic or metal? All these things get rallied up and are left to rot in the scorching sun at various scrap yards around the world. Here, the scrap is recycled for useful parts or, if in excellent condition, restored altogether. As they say: one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. |
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| The Worlds Largest Bone Yard |
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| The USAF bone yard in the stable climate of the Arizona desert is the only unit of the air force that actually makes money. |
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| Train cemetery, Uyuni, Bolivia |
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| With its enormous vaulted courtyard, Munich airport manages to bring back some of the drama of a Victorian railroad terminus. This is something that many airport designers have tried and failed to carry off, here it works. |
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| Buffalo skull mountain |
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| This is a boneyard in the literal sense of the word. Thousands upon thousands of buffalo skulls at the Bone yard, Michigan Carbon Works, Detroit, Michigan |
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| Russian planes boneyard in Iraq |
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| What makes this collection of Russian made Iraqi Migs so weird is the American graffiti covering every surface. |
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| Pripyat, Ukraine Chernobyl Scrap |
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| "Hundreds of pieces of Russian army hardware is left on the small field right near to Chernobyl. All this machinery has participated in Chernobyl accident liquidation and is radioactive from top to toe. Now it dies out under the open skies of deserted Chernobyl." |
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| Surrey, England |
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| "This company, Miscellanea Discontinued Bathroom-ware, claims to have more than 50,000 pieces of discontinued “sanitary-ware,” toilets, sinks, bathtubs; making it the largest such salvage place in the world." |
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| Processing plant near Shangai, China |
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| Workers strip copper from imported, used, electrical motors (from washing machines to industrial equipment) at a thirty-five acre processing plant two hours south of Shanghai. China's low-cost labor and high-demand for copper allows it to recycle motors far more completely and efficiently than can be accomplished in the developed world. This factory, likely the largest motor processor in the world, imported in excess of 12,000 shipping containers of motors |
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| Hudson, Colorado Tire Dump |
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| The Hudson, Colorado Tire Dump, one of the worlds largest, is now owned by Magnum D'Or Resources Inc., a rubber recycling company.
Colorado is home to 1/3 of all whole waste tires in the USA, consequently Magnum now owns 100% of one of the worlds largest tire landfills, and perhaps currently the largest in the USA. |
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| Boat graveyard at Arthur Kill, Staten Island |
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| Alang, Gujarat, India Ship breaking yard |
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| The little known west African state of Guinea Bissau, sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea, includes the Bijagos Archipelagos. The archipelago has been protected as a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993. It is known for a diverse range of wildlife, including sea cows, hippopotamus, otters, six species of sea turtles and two species of salt-water crocodiles. There are 700,000 migratory birds and numerous local bird species living in and around the archipelago. Fishing is the major source of income for locals in Guinea Bissau. Despite this ecological heritage Spanish shipping companies want to develop the island of Bolama as a scrap yard for obsolete ships. |
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