I see some of these guys every morning. Actually, I usually hear them before I see them, because frequently I wake up to their bell-ringing and calling. Lemme tell ya, 15 floors up behind (according to my cousin) double-glazed windows, those are some good lungs. Anyway, I see them every day, with their carts of what looks to be junk.

It is, pretty much. There's no recycling program here. No official recycling program, I should say. Instead, guys (and a few women) like this go around buying things like plastic bottles, cardboard and packing materials, and assorted other things from people on the street. They then resell the goods (I'm not sure to whom) for a small profit. It's kinda like collecting your aluminum cans for the 5c (10c in MI?) redemption, only on a much larger (but lower-paid) scale.
On the one hand, I'm glad that not all of this stuff is going in the trash -- I've been saving up a few plastic bottles precisely because I didn't want to just dump them, but didn't know what else to do with them, and now I do -- but on the other, I wonder if they can really make a living out of it.