As the rag and bone man with his horse-drawn carriage fades to memory, a new breed of informal recyclers, looking for metals and things that other people have left behind, is on the increase. Leonie Butler reports

Living in the ‘up and coming’ area of town, I thought I was the only one in the office witnessing what I can only describe as a new breed of recyclers. However, a brief mention one day, and my colleagues confirmed that there’s a whole network of this modern rag and bone man across the city.

In my part of the city, every Sunday evening (before waste collections on Monday morning), you can witnessseveral white vans, in various conditions, prowling up and down the street, looking for items they can sell on or scrap. I want to say it’s rubbish that you’ve put out on the pavement, but unlike kerbside recyclers, these individuals are apt to have a nose around your front garden, just as in that episode of The Apprentice where two of the wannabes went out collecting junk and wondered whether a BBQ in someone’s front yard was fair game. They decided against it. But my next-door neighbour had his defunct strimmer (the blade was metal) taken from inside his garden (which, truth be told, saved him a trip), and within an hour of a steel bath going out in front of our house, it was gone. Taken by the informal recycler.

Let us be clear, however, that this is not as romantic a vision as the horse and cart of old, and the hazards are many. Certainly, the characters I see are not ones to stand on ceremony – a sink is hauled out of a skip and smashed against the pavement until the metal taps are freed.