A Liverpool scrap metal drive in 1952, Disused rail tracks are hoisted onto the ground of a scrap yard. Men cut up tracks as sparks fly in the air. Vans advertising 'Speed the scrap, speed the steel' and 'Keep your City' unload metal objects into heaps. Cranes hoist up metal tracks and skips full of scrap metal. Workers sort through the scrap, throwing metals onto the backs of lorries and cutting up metal bars.

A scrap metal worker sits aboard a lorry as it collects objects from a residential street, where local people hand over household metal objects, including old saucepans and bedsteads.

Views of Liverpool Overhead Railway tracks, docks and Liverpool Cathedral. A group of men dig up tramlines on roadside, prising the tracks from a cobbled street. A van arrives to unload metal in scrap yard and men sort through various metals. Workers break up the remains of boats on the shoreline close to the docks. Ferries cross the Mersey and a ship leaves the harbour with a view of the Liver Building in the background.

A convoy of lorries carry scrap metal as trams pass by on a street in Central Liverpool and a train approaches a station on the Overhead Railway. More scenes with men sorting through metal scrap in a yard. A woman worker poses in front of a parked van on a residential street as residents throw scrap metal on to the back of the van. She stands by the van talking on a public address system, surrounded by a group of residents.