depending on the size of your space, I think the options all vary.
I find that friction shifters and plastic brake levers are still salvageable from bikes like that, but I know exactly where you are going with all of that. I think we serve a purpose as the middle man between the community and the steel scrappers. Every day we are open we probably get stuff that goes into the "strip and scrap pile". We have a number of a nice guy who is a local steel scrapper so we call him up when we get a good pile.