Mogga wrote:

The stress, time and effort of sorting out petty stuff is enough for
it to be worth stamping down on it heavily.
They've nicked drain covers round here.
Who pays for them? Surely the scrappies need to not buy the stuff to
stop the cycle?

It used to be aluminium barrels from outside pubs. The perps would put
the barrel inside an old tyre and set fire to the tyre to melt the
barrel into a less-recognisable shape. Of course the scrappy should have
known that the charred, smelly lumps of aluminium were stolen, but I
suspect they didn't care as long as there was "plausible deniability".