Can Copper Scrap satiate the needs of the industry all by Itself? For hundreds of years copper had a few uses; but today, copper has made its way into every gadget, appliance, instrument and consumer good one can think of. This often brings up one question and that is ‘can scrap copper; obtained from the various scrap yards in Dubai and worldwide satiate the needs of an industry?’ Scrapped copper has been used for hundreds of years over and over again; wherein the only thing that changes about it, is its form. Back then, copper had a few uses; but today, copper has made its way into every gadget, appliance, instrument and consumer good one can think of. This often brings up one question and that is ‘can scrap copper; obtained from the various scrap yards in Dubai and worldwide, satiate the needs of the entire industry? Whether this industry refers to a nation or a market really does not matter here. What does is the recycling bit. Can copper scrap obtained via a number of metal and electronics recyclers be supplied in such large quantities back to manufacturers that they simply would not need to mine more virgin copper? Well the answer is a simple no. There is a lot of copper buried in electronics, appliances and automobiles that go unaccounted for. In fact there are so many sources of scrap copper that haven’t been tapped into yet; those that are simply lying down in garbage dumps and those that are buried deep inside landfills. There is a lot of potential in sourcing recycled copper, but sadly when it comes to e-waste, there is not a lot of interest, simply because newer and cost-effective technologies for obtaining the same have not been developed.
Copper scrap alone obtained from a variety of sources in Dubai and worldwide simply cannot satiate the needs of the industry because of another reason and that as aforementioned, is the growing population. The varieties of applications that need copper to function have also quadrupled in the past decade. And with the growing population demanding for such gadgets, electronics and other machinery, there is no way in which the supply of recycled scrap copper can alone be enough to satisfy the needs of an industry in a single country (forget the entire industry). Another reason would be the rise in demand for cleaner energy resources which only copper via electricity can deliver; which is why there is no way out. Copper scrap obtained from various countries play the important role of being able to contribute to growing need for copper. The problem here is not the manufacturers; it’s the demand from the growing population that is forcing manufacturers to demand for more raw material sources. Copper mining and processing take up a lot of resources and if taken to extremes damages the environment as well. But in today’s economic climate there simply seems to be no other way out.