One man's trash is another man's treasure.

That's true for scrap yards in Lee County right now. Mountains of metal debris are pouring in every day.

Hurricane Irma left a lot of twisted metal and busted appliances behind.
All Scrap Recycling is one of a handful of scrap yards in Lee County that's seen a huge spike in aluminum sales after the storm tore down thousands of metal structures, roofs, fences and pool cages.

The company wants your damaged metal, and you get a cut of profit too.

"You're looking at a three-to-four story tall pile of literally just carport and sheet aluminum." said All Scrap Manager, Trevor Mackellar

"It looks like most of it is from like trailers and stuff that were kinda like dismantled from the hurricane," customer La'Norris Campbell said.

Hundreds of thousands of pieces of metal in the collection yard were all mangled by the recent hurricane.

"Aluminum pool cages, aluminum carports, appliances, air conditioners, even some of your household appliances that you may have lost, down to toasters, VCRs, Cable TV boxes,” Mackellar said.

Customers can make a pretty penny from their storm damage.

"We're paying anywhere from 25 cents a pound, up to 65 cents a pound. If you have 200 pounds of pool cage, you'll be getting back 80 to 100 to 200 dollars, depending on how clean and prepared you are with your material," Mackellar said.

The cleaner and more stripped down your haul is, the more cash you can put in your pocket.

"Are the screws removed? Are the spines removed? Is the screen removed?” Mackellar said.

The scrap yards won’t accept refrigerators or appliances with rotten food or goods inside of them.

"The very worst thing that you could possibly do and get turned away is to bring in your old refrigerator that went out in the storm and leave all the food inside of it," Mackellar said.
All Scrap said a positive thing to come out of Irma is that they've hired three more full-time employees just to keep running.

Homeowners are making back a lot of money for their damaged property too.

A  downside, however, is as more aluminum comes in, the price drops and profit could go down for everyone.