Homeless recycling cans straight into gangster gold

NAGOYA--Organized crime is generally thought to involve guns, drugs, prostitution and other unsavory illegal acts.

What about mobilizing homeless people as runners to sneak old aluminum cans from recycling bins?

If it's organized, and it's a crime, it's good enough for the yakuza.

Last October, Aichi police arrested two bosses from the Kodo-kai, a Nagoya-based affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, after they were caught running an aluminum can ring in downtown Nagoya parks.

One of the gangsters established a company. Then they set up four huts in the parks to serve as aluminum can collection centers.

They hired staff to collect cans from homeless people at about 80 yen per kilogram, and then resold them to recycling businesses for 120 to 130 yen per kg.

With about 40 tons of cans coming in a month, the men were clearing about 2 million yen in monthly profit.

By comparison, the city of Nagoya only collected 306 tons during all of 2004, indicating that more cans were being pinched than collected.

That's a lot of money going straight from city coffers to gangsters' pockets.

"For citizens of the community, who had been diligently involved in the recycling effort, the fact that the cans ended up funding organized crime came as a shock," said a city assembly member in November. "The city must come up with appropriate measures that will satisfy the community."

"We will seek effective measures, including improvement of legislation," a city official replied.

Until that day, though, the city's hands are tied. Although it has received complaints about recycling drop-off stations getting trashed, the city does not have a law forbidding people from pilfering cans from those stations.

As a result, much as Al Capone was eventually caught for tax evasion, the police could only arrest the gangsters for violating the city park law--essentially, squatting.

In Tokyo and other big cities, municipalities have their own bylaws to keep recyclable material from the hands of profiteers.

Tokyo's Setagaya Ward prohibits the taking of items from collection stations, and in Yokohama, recyclables become city property by ordnance the moment they are dropped off. The Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo has arrested operators who scour collection stations on suspicion of theft or ordinance violation.

In Nagoya, insisted a city official, that would not work.

"Those bylaws were passed with the aim of restricting newspaper recycling operators from coming around in their trucks and picking up bundles of old paper," the official said. "They wouldn't stop the homeless from pinching aluminum cans."

The official also pointed out the difficulty in enforcing such laws.

"If we are going after cars, the operators could be easily tracked by their registration plates. It is going to be a lot more difficult trying to pinpoint homeless people," the official said.

"There are 14,300 aluminum can collection stations. Patrolling all of these places is just not realistic."

Furthermore, simply forbidding the practice is not as easy as it sounds. Aluminum cans are the most valuable, followed by steel cans, which fetched 9 yen per kg in fiscal 2004, according to city officials. By comparison, glass bottles fetched 1 yen for 2 kilograms. Some homeless people manage to live on aluminum recycling alone.

"A major part of homeless in Nagoya make their living by collecting aluminum cans," said Yutaka Onishi, president of Sasashima Hiyatoi Rodo Kumiai (Sasashima day laborers association), a private organization that helps homeless people strive to become financially independent.

"Regulations will only interfere with their efforts."

One 63-year old homeless man who lives in a park downtown agreed.

"There are very few day-labor jobs around," the man said. "Collecting aluminum cans is the only way to make a livelihood. The city is pushing us out of town with every pretense such as the Nagoya Expo."

The homeless man then added ominously, "If they decide to ban our can collection, there is going to be a riot."

The city is meeting with the Aichi prefectural police to figure out what to do, and has been asking other municipalities for advice.

"We do want to prevent (our recycling program) from being used by gangsters," said one official.

"But at the moment, we don't see any credible breakthrough measures taking shape either."
For now, the Al Capone approach is the only option.

On Feb. 7, the Nagoya District Court sentenced one of the Kodo-kai bosses to 18 months in prison, and called the scheme both "malicious, and extremely profitable."

At the trial, however, the defendant openly revealed his intention to continue the recycling business in the future.

Next time, he said, he just won't do it in the park.