Tru-Recycling

Nothing glamorous here but garbage is a reality. Coming from a big city where we have the luxury of weekly garbage pickup where it magically disappears, it’s not so easy out in the north woods of Michigan. For one, you are mainly responsible for your own garbage. While food and compost-​able items can be tossed into the woods for the raccoons to enjoy, other garbage has to be hauled to a local dropoff site run by Waste Management, where you pay by the pound. So what do you do when you got scrap metal like an old charcoal grill, fence posts, and buckets of rusty screws accumulated over decades? Well, this place pays you. Nothing major but coming out with $ 7 for a small van-​load of steel and aluminum scrap is better than paying for the same amount of stuff going in WM’s garbage pile in Iron River.
And the folks are friendly there. A crew of guys sorting scrap will gladly unload the car for you so you don’t have to get dirty hauling it yourself. Then you go inside a small building overlooking the scrap yard and there’s the stereotypical run-​down looking office with a lady who dispenses the cash for your trash.
TruRecycling is off of Highway 424 in Caspian, just south of Iron River, but off the beaten path by the golf course. Nothing glamorous like I said, but good to know if you’re living in the UP.