Back when I was in boarding school, I helped a little (and I emphasize little) with a metal recycling project–you know, separating copper and other metals from larger contraptions. At the time, I wondered how much money could really be made with a small-scale operation.
With commodity prices going the way they have been, there’s more money to be made now. Problem is, for common products, such as paper, plastic, or aluminum, it’s apparently still not very profitable to run city-wide operations. So a lot of it still goes in the land fill.