metal scrap, in my opinion, is a hassle to get large amounts of and requires you to sit on the beach for a /long/ time to collect a lot of it. perhaps an alternative could be added where you can purchase metal scrap from kazuki at the smithy? it makes sense that he would have metal scrap considering he's a blacksmith, and it would eliminate the hassle of needing to get a lot of metal scrap for larger projects. that way people can choose between buying it or getting it for free from the beach.

I was thinking that metal scrap is a hassle too but rather than buy it from the smithy which removes an opportunity for a new mechanic, I was thinking we could have a metal detector as a tool and go on the beach to locate them. We would have a high chance of scrap metal and small chance of something really good, like a ring, to give to an NPC.

An idea I had was just to make the metal and plastic scraps an item on the ground that you just walk over it to pick it up, kind of like how you harvest the fruit from trees off the ground once you shake the tree. That way you can get a sense that you're actually cleaning up the beach :) To keep the bucket it involved, make it so you have to have the bucket equipped when you walk over the item to collect it.

Scrap metal is actually going to be pulled form being used as a building material entirely.