Copper Recycling

Good afternoon everyone.

Yes it is light outside and it is still Friday so there’s still a weekend ahead but probably not for me. I got projects and tons of reading to do which is why I’m updating now. For those of you who enjoy taking naps, take one for me this weekend.

This week I had a hard time thinking of what to research so I turned to the creative minds of my dad and my brother. They kept giving ideas I had already discussed and then copper recycling was mentioned. This topic was a good choice for the blog, especially this week, because the lights have been flickering on and off at my house for the past week.

Copper is 100 percent recyclable and can last a long time. Checking out various websites on copper recycling and seeing how much information is on it, I was surprised but at the same time I hadn’t research it. A site called CopperInfo is pretty straight forward and gives percentages on how often it is recycled. It said the recycle rate of copper is 80-85 percent and it can be remelted without further processing. I thought the next paragraph was interesting because it said 80 percent of all copper ever mined is still in existence. It has been recycled and used over and over again. Look around your house and check out the copper, who knows when and where else it could have been used.

Speaking of the household, here’s another site that has to do with copper recycling within the home. It is from The Copper Development Association and it gives ideas on ways to recycle copper within the home like cookware and of course coins. Here a couple of facts I thought would be helpful to see right off the bat. Check out the rest of the site because the facts I show here might not be as important to others readers:

• Known worldwide copper resources are estimated at nearly 5.8 trillion pounds, of which only about 0.7 trillion pounds (12%) have been mined throughout history - and nearly all of that amount is still in circulation, because copper's recycling rate is higher than that of any other engineering metal.

• Each year in the USA, nearly as much copper is recovered from recycled material as is derived from newly mined ore. When you exclude wire production, which mainly uses new refined copper, the amount of copper used by copper and brass mills, ingot makers, foundries, powder plants and other industries shows that nearly three-fourths comes from recycled copper scrap.

• The United States does not depend on imported copper - we produce more than 95% of all we use each year!

Copper has quite the lifespan of 30 years according to this website called the International Copper Study Group. This site gives a lot of the same facts as the others but one statement from this site I found that could sum up copper recycling is this:

“Recycling is an important economic activity with significant environmental benefits. Not only does recycling copper result in more efficient use of natural resources, but it also results in energy savings and a reduction in material sent for final disposal, such as to a landfill.”

This could have been a more intelligent way of saying that recycling copper is significant because it can be produced for another future copper uses.
Finally, for my fellow Tucsonans I found a company called Recyco. I thought this website was the most detailed in terms of copper recycling in town. In fact, it gave a list of metals and other materials recyclable.

Non-Ferrous Metals include:

• ALUMINUM/ALUMINIO
• COPPER/COBRE
• BRASS/BRONCE
• STAINLESS STEEL
• ELECTRIC MOTORS/MOTORES ELECTRICOS
• LEAD/PLOMO
• SOLDER/SOLDADURA

Some examples of materials we purchase are:

• insulated wire
• electric motors
• radiators
• transmissions
• aluminum cans
• tubing, etc.

There are others like Desert Metals Recycling Inc. located at 3119 E Pennsylvania St, and Amcep at 4484 E Tennessee St.

Next week will be my last post on Recycle This. It will be thoughts on the last three months and blogs I had some fun posting. Until then STAY RELAXED.