Scrap metal recycling plays crucial role in climate change

As the world's resources begin to run out and the threat of climate change triggers energy savings, scrap metal traders will become more important than ever.
Global forecasts are expected to reach 8.2 billion by 2030 from 6.7 billion now.

The generation of waste is increasing rapidly, offering big potential for recycling, which saves energy and helps reduce greenhouse gas production.

"The scarcity of virgin materials will soon become an issue," said Henrik Harjula of the Environment Directorate of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Harjula said the world's copper resources would last for another 60 years, silver 29 years, zinc 46 years while tin deposits would be exhausted in 40 years.

The OECD predicts by 2020, annual resource extraction would increase to 80 billion tons-nearly double the level extracted in 2002, and by 2030 it could reach 100 billion.

"This poses a real opportunity, but it is also a challenge for the recycling industry," OECD's Harjula said.

Around 40 percent of the raw materials such as copper, aluminum and steel come from recycled metal instead of ore from mines.

Smelters can make large cost savings by using secondary raw materials, for example in aluminum where it takes 95 percent less energy to produce the metal from scrap such as old cans.

A study by the Imperial College in London showed that by smelting aluminum scrap, 354,000 tons of carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, is saved per 100,000 tons of aluminum produced.

"The half a billion or more tons of greenhouse gas emissions that you avoid through recycling has a value of $40 or more per ton," said Nicholas Stern, the author of an influential report on climate change.

The turnover of the recycling industry amounts to around $160 billion per year . It handles over 600 million tons of raw materials.

The world already saves the equivalent of 1.8 percent of global fossil fuel emissions due to the recycling industry.

"This is a very significant contribution," Stern said. He said the recycling industry was saving a similar amount to what the airline industry emits. By contributing an average of 40 percent of raw materials today through recycling, it could perhaps be 50 percent in the future.

Stern likened that to the equivalent of cutting aircraft emissions further by 15 percent.

However, the recycling industry, in particular the steel industry, still has a long way to go to become energy efficient and reduce its own carbon footprint.

The International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) said its industry accounts for a fifth of the emissions from the recycling sector and it emits some 3-4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: redOrbit