In today’s world, every industry across all sectors has to optimize for efficiency. This trend has allowed recycling to emerge as a top industry, due to its significant contribution in the growing trend of going green. Scrap metal recycling is making a huge difference for the efficiency of all kinds of businesses by providing high value through the materials recycled. Recycling products like copper scrap, steel, aluminum, nickel, and more has never been more valuable.

Copper scrap, in particular, is highly valued in scrap metal recycling because of its diverse uses. Mining raw copper ore is now a tedious and costly process. At the same time, copper continues to be used in essential products, and as such recycling copper scrap is now an incredibly beneficial process.

In today’s blog, we will be discussing the way copper scrap is processed in recycling facilities:

Bare bright copper wire - as the name suggests, this copper scrap is a solid, clean copper wire. Typically, it has been previously insulated with either plastic or rubber, but that insulation is removed for the recycling process. Since it is already stripped of its insulation, it must be separated from the other scraps.

Copper tubing or flashing/bus bar - this copper scrap looks like bare bright copper wire and is free of any impurities. Bus bar is often used in plumbing fixtures and must be separated from any brass fittings and tin solder to become more valuable. In case there are other materials attached to the copper pipe, the items will be sorted separately for those impurities to be removed.

Insulated copper wire and cable – this version of copper scrap still has insulation on it. Insulated pieces are set aside and processed so that the insulation can be completely stripped, leaving the copper material bare and suitable for recycling.

These are just some of the common types of copper scraps that you can recycle. For more information on metal recycling, give the experts at Alnor Industries a call today.