HOLBROOK, N.Y. — Lots more than empty soda and beer cans are being recycled at Crestwood Metal Corp., a family-owned business operating on eastern Long Island for 50 years.

With 38 employees working on a 5-acre site, the plant recycles 35 million to 40 million pounds of scrap metal annually, sending the raw material to factories producing everything from auto parts to trailer homes.

Crestwood President Bill Goldkind says generating that much scrap metal requires more than just empty cans.

"We recycle auto parts, storm windows, storm doors," Goldman said.

"We also get a lot of government aluminum. I've melted down missile bodies and even some tanks."

Having started the business a half-century ago with his father, Goldkind has 10 tractor-trailer drivers on the road at any given time in a five-state area around New York, either picking up materials to be recycled or delivering blocks of recycled metal to manufacturers.

Jerry Powell, the editor of the Portland, Ore.-based trade journal Resource Recycling, said that 9,000 communities around the country have door-to-door recycling programs and that about one-third of the solid waste generated in the U.S. is recycled.

"We're doing very well," he said.