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Almost all metals can be recycled into new high-quality metals, as their properties are not diminished during the recycling process. Environmentally, metal recycling has many perks, as fewer raw materials need to be extracted which reduces carbon emissions, and financial reward as many companies

What is the difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals?

The main difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals is that ferrous metals contain iron and non-ferrous metals don’t. Ferrous metals are also mostly magnetic, whereas non-ferrous don’t contain magnetic properties, making it relatively easy to tell them apart.

What are the five most common metals that can be recycled?

Steel

As a ferrous metal, steel is a major component in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, cars, machines and appliances used across the world. According to environmental agencies, most steel items today contain between 25% and 100% recycled content.

Aluminium

Aluminium is a similarly popular metal that’s capable of being melted at comparatively lower temperatures than steel, making it particularly attractive for recycling Aluminium cans use just 5% of the energy needed to produce them from scratch during the recycling process

Brass

Malleable, conductive and resistant to corrosion and fatigue, brass is a popular metal for recycling. Energy costs for recycling brass are lower compared to those of other metals

There are two most common types of copper pipe, #1 copper pipe and #2 copper pipe.

The difference between the two is pretty simple, #1 copper is clean copper pipe: no paint, no solder, no other metals or materials attached to it. #2 copper pipe can have paint solder dirt but no other metals or materials attached to it. There are few ways to go about recycling it, you can either sort your #1 and #2 or you could mix it together and most recycling yards will just go in the middle on the price.

The difference in price between the two is usually $00.10-$00.20 so if someone has quoted you $1.80 for #1 copper pipe and $1.60 for #2 copper pipe you can always mix them together and try to sell them for the average of $1.70 per lb. you always need to make sure that you don’t have any brass attached to it because that will bring your price down, most yards will have to buy it for copper brass mix in that case, it all depends on how much time you want to dedicate to this process, selling it for copper brass mix will save you a lot of time and in most cases will still bring you decent money, the price for copper brass mix is normally about $00.20-$00.40 less than #2 copper depending on the copper to brass ratio in your material.

The demand for aluminum products is growing steadily because of their positive contribution to modern living. Aluminium is the second most widely used metal whereas the aluminum can is the most recycled consumer product in the world. Aluminum finds extensive use in air, road and sea transport, food and medicine, packaging, construction, electronics and electrical power transmission.The excellent recyclability of aluminum and its high scrap value and low energy needs during recycling make it highly desirable to one and all. The global aluminium demand is forecasted to soar to nearly 70 million tons by 2020 from around 37 million tons.

Recycling of Aluminium

The contribution of recycled metal to the global output of aluminum products has increased from 17 percent in 1960 to 34 percent today, and is expected to rise to almost 40 percent by 2020. Global recycling rates are high, with approximately 90 percent of the metal used for transport and construction applications recovered, and over 60 percent of used beverage cans are collected.

Aluminium does not degrade during the recycling process, since its atomic structure is not altered during melting. Aluminum recycling is both economically and environmentally effective, as recycled aluminum requires only 5% of the energy used to make primary aluminum, and can have the same properties as the parent metal.

During the course of multiple recycling, more and more alloying elements are introduced into the metal cycle. This effect is put to good use in the production of casting alloys, which generally need these elements to attain the desired alloy properties.The industry has a long tradition of collecting and recycling used aluminium products.

Over the years, USA and European countries have developed robust separate collection systems for aluminum packaging with a good degree of success. Recycling aluminum reduces the need for raw materials and reduces the use of valuable energy resources. Recycled aluminum is made into aircraft, automobiles, bicycles, boats, computers, cookware, gutters, siding, wire and cans.

How are Aluminium Cans Recycled?

Aluminum can is the most recycled consumer product in the world. Each year, the aluminum industry pays out more than US$800 million for empty aluminum cans. Recycling aluminum cans is a closed-loop process since used beverage cans that are recycled are primarily used to make beverage cans. Recycled aluminium cans are used again for the production of new cans or for the production of other valuable aluminium products such as engine blocks, building facades or bicycles.

METAL PRESERVES CONTINUE TO THRIVE

There is a great deal of metal that is still in the ground. However, you’d be surprised at how quickly it would diminish if metal recycling efforts weren’t being made around the world. If the recycling of metals stopped today, but the manufacture of metal objects continued on the same trajectory, the world’s metal preserves would be depleted within decades.

This is why recycling your metals is so important. By recycling your metals, you prevent the need for metal mining. This allows natural metals to remain in the ground, thus allowing them to be used when they’re truly needed.

This has economic benefits as well. The richer our metal preserves, the less money our metal items will cost. In other words, by recycling your metals, you are helping to control the costs of items that consist of metals.

LESS POLLUTION

While metal recycling is not a pollution-free process, it causes a great deal less pollution than fresh metal mining does. This is because it doesn’t require as much energy usage, and ultimately results in fewer carbon emissions.

ENERGY IS CONSERVED

At the present time, fossil fuels are our most commonly used energy source. While this energy source is highly effective, it is also finite. At some point, we will run out of fossil fuels and will have to turn to alternative forms of energy.

In the meantime, it’s important that we make efforts to conserve energy as much as possible. While there are a number of ways to reduce energy usage, the recycling of metals is a key step in the process. By recycling our metals instead of mining for fresh ones, we reduce fossil fuel usage substantially and conserve a great deal of the energy.

Brass is an extremely common metal that is found all over your home, office, work site, and more. You can find faucets, EDM wire, hose spigots, metal pens, and many other common items that are made of brass and are perfect for scrap recycling. Brass can often be found on the end of copper wire as well. But by far the most common way to scrap brass is to recycle old plumbing materials. Here’s what you need to know when recycling plumbing brass.

If you aren’t sure if a metal is brass, simply scratch it with a file. Brass will be yellow when scratched. It is usually combined with metals like zinc and copper to create a product, so scratching those away reveals the brass beneath. Heavy copper content will lend brass a reddish color. When looking for brass scrap, don’t forget areas like the valves on grills and ovens, as well as sinks and even some silverware.

Scrapping Plumbing Brass

Getting the best prices is always a matter of careful sorting. As far as pricing plumbing brass, most of the time it is very difficult to quote best price for plumbing brass over the phone because it usually consists of a variety of different materials, from plastic to copper. If its a mix load, we can always give you best average price once we see it, or you can sort it to get top prices.

Lead is classified as hazardous waste and is highly toxic to most species. Lead can be effectively recycled for reuse in new lead-based products, diverting it from landfill and using less energy than refining primary ore. Lead is used in a number of products but only accounts for only a small part of the waste stream. However, this metal is highly toxic to animals and humans and is classified as hazardous waste.

Due to it toxicity lead should not be placed in landfill where it could contaminate groundwater. Recycling lead helps protect the environment from toxic metal and it also uses less energy than refining primary ore. About 90% of the lead scrap produced in Australia arises from lead-acid batteries in vehicles.

The majority of scrap metal recyclers will accept lead waste in a number of forms – including lead-acid batteries. Recyclers may offer drop-off or pick services and there may be a fee associated with this service.Lead is collected and then smelted in a furnace. It can them be formed into lead ingots of various purities, quantities, size and weight configurations for reuse in a range of products.

To understand buildings, consider cities. They are evolving, iterative systems whose peripheries and hinterlands are implicated in their growth, demanding material flows of natural resources and the expenditure of energy. So too with buildings, although such thinking is relatively new. And, as urban development marches on, it is as important to analyze the embodied energy and material output of buildings when they come down as when they go up. Such flows are sometimes redirected into recycled products, but more often they terminate in landfills, waterways, or worse.

As the environmental crisis worsens, we must ask: Can we reduce our demand on new resources? Need our built environment be in perpetual flux, an endless succession of destruction and rebuilding? For Kiel Moe, professor of architecture at McGill University, the discourse surrounding demolition and recycling is “fundamental to an ethos of planned obsolescence” and isn’t “a viable way to think about sustainable construction.” Resisting this “cycle of buildings” assigns greater importance to the architectural imagination— something that should excite designers. Creative reuse, retrofitting, and, most importantly, designing programmatically versatile buildings that last should be architects’ main objectives.

But the demolition-construction cycle also entails pragmatic challenges, which may offer important—albeit fundamentally incremental—solutions to our waste predicament. Design for disassembly should become part of architectural practice, and planning to systematically sort materials during demolition can make it easier to repurpose them. The high environmental and logistical cost of removal, transportation, and processing of materials for recycling should also give pause to wrecking-ball zealots.

Ultimately, once building materials are untethered to a structure, they will find a new home, preferably in an up-, re-, or downcycled context.

1. E-Waste Negatively Impacts The Soil

First, e-waste can have a damaging effect on the soil of a region. As e-waste breaks down, it releases toxic heavy metals. Such heavy metals include lead, arsenic, and cadmium.

When these toxins leach into the soil, they influence the plants and trees that are crowing from this soil.

Thus, these toxins can enter the human food supply, which can lead to birth defects as well as a number of other health complications.

2. E-Waste Negatively Impacts The Water

E-waste that is improperly disposed of by residents or businesses also leads to toxins entering groundwater.

This groundwater is what underlies many surface streams, ponds, and lakes. Many animals rely on these channels of water for nourishment. Thus, these toxins can make these animals sick and cause imbalances in the planetary ecosystem.

E-waste can also impact humans that rely on this water. Toxins like lead, barium, mercury, and lithium.

3. E-Waste Negatively Impacts The Air

When e-waste is disposed of at the landfill, it’s usually burned by incinerators on site.

This process can release hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, which pollutes the air that many animals and humans rely on.

Furthermore, these hydrocarbons can contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, which many scientists think is a leading contributor to global warming.

In some parts of the world, desperate people sift through landfills in order to salvage e-waste for money. Yet, some of these people burn unwanted parts like wires in order to extract copper, which can lead to air pollution as well.

Australians drain the life from more than 400 million batteries each year. Less than 5% are recycled, and our consumption of batteries is increasing year to year.

When dumped in landfill, batteries can leak a range of toxic substances, including lead, mercury and cadmium, into the environment.

To counter this, Ecocycle is leading the way in battery recycling in Australia. Our approach is to:

• Accept all types of batteries. There’s nothing to think about – if it’s a battery, we’ll recycle it.
• Simplify collection. From pre-paid collection buckets suitable for just about any workplace to skips and stillages for large volumes of big batteries, we’ve got the logistics of battery collection covered.
• Automate sorting. Automated sorting is the key to increasing the value of recovered batteries, to reduce the overall cost of battery recycling and to improve the safety of the entire recycling chain.
• Provide safe storage and processing. We are investing in state-of-the-art facilities to ensure the safe storage of batteries as they wait for recycling, and seek to maximise the volume of batteries that are recycled within Australia.

Sorting

Before batteries can be directed to the correct recycling stream they need to be sorted. Ecocycle is investing in state-of-the-art sorting systems to automate this process. Computer-controlled sorting machines separate batteries according to size and chemistry, and do so far more quickly, accurately and efficiently than manual sorting.

Storage

Some of the less common types of batteries need to be stored until a sufficient quantity is available to make recycling economically viable. To ensure the highest level of safety, our new battery storage facility is being equipped with sensitive fire detection systems, video surveillance and automated fire suppression systems, including fire-fighting foam.

Recycling

How a particular battery is recycled is mainly dependent on its chemistry. Ecocycle is committed to ensuring that as much battery waste as possible is recycled within Australia. However, the wide range of battery types and materials means that some batteries need to be shipped to specialist facilities overseas.

Copper (Cu) is both a mineral and an element present in our everyday lives. It’s everywhere, from your kitchen sink to benchtops to jewelry. A large car can have more than 45kg of copper. This material is valued for its excellence as a heat and electricity conductor. It’s malleable, ductile, and corrosion-resistant, as well.

These qualities are among the reasons why copper is one of the most used metals in the world, along with aluminium and iron. That’s why copper recycling is essential and valuable.

Copper is believed to have been first used from 8,000 to 5,000 BC. During this era, copper was an alternative to stone. Egyptians soon started heating and shaping the metal in 4,000 BC. Soon, technology improved, and smelting ores began in the Bronze Age. More advancements took place. Once known as the metal of Cyprus (or simply Cyprus), the metal eventually became cup rum (or copper in English).

Copper wire recycling allows us to save energy, help the environment, and protect natural resources. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy. The recycling process can be complex but is generally made up of the following steps:

1. Stripping

The first step is to strip the copper wire from its protective shielding, often in the form of plastic insulation. Since copper has high conductivity, it’s coated to protect cables and other items from this metal. For copper wire recycling, you need to remove this protective coating to begin the process.

Cut through the shielding before removing the wire from the insulation material. To finish this step faster, you can use wire stripping tools, such as an automatic wire stripper. If you only have a few copper wires, you can simply use a pair of scissors or a wire stripper. Make sure you remove all nuts, bolts, and nails before stripping.

2. Sorting

Once insulation and attachments are removed, it’s time to sort the copper wires. They will be treated according to their grades. The higher graded copper wires will typically be melted and recast without other treatments. Meanwhile, those with lower grades may require further processing, such as removing their impurities.

3. Quality Checking

The metal will then be sent to a recycling facility for a trained eye to inspect the quality of the wires. This additional step is to ensure that there are no contaminants before the wires are melted. In some cases, a granulator may be used, which will:

• Shred the metal
• Separate intertwined wires and thick cables
• Cut the copper wire into bits

A crusher may be used for cutting the wires into manageable sizes. It ensures that there are no unwanted materials when it’s time for melting them.

4. Melting

Once ensured that the materials are ready, copper wire recycling will continue with the melting process. The metal will be loaded into a furnace where it’s melted at 1084C and cast into a particular shape. It will then be left to cool. Once ready, it will be transformed into rods, wires, or sheets before sending the recycled metal into a plant for further manufacturing.

As you can see, copper has a very high melting point. That heat is intense, and therefore you should never attempt to do it on your own. Leave the job to the pros. We recommend that you only perform the first step mentioned above, in which you collect and strip the copper wires. After that, you can take the wires to a recycling facility, such as Collins Recycling.