How To Find Copper Scrap: The Best Place to Start
Even those with a rudimentary understanding of metal value know that copper is the holy grail of scrap finds. Although the scrap price of copper far outstrips all of the other metals, it’s one of the hardest to find and in this article, we uncover some of the best places to (legally) source scrap copper.
How to find copper scrap
The main scrap copper provider for Australia and New Zealand is Traxx Metal Refinery in Western Australia. If you’re not in Western Australia and the location is slightly further away, don’t despair – there are plenty of other places to find scrap copper. Just be sure to conduct your investigation before you get too far in. It’s very easy to lose track of time when scouring for metal. #1: Visit your local store The most convenient way to find scrap copper is through your local hardware store. Most businesses offer a variety of scrap metal that can be legally and disposed of with them. Most stores have a small window or area for scrap metal, just waiting to be snapped up. More readily available scrap metal in-store is easy to spot.
What is copper scrap?
The right way to define copper scrap is by the number of scales or millers used to extract copper from an alloy of copper and another metal, such as zinc. Each miller is one single scale of the process. Each miller contains between 0.0005 and 1.6 grams of copper, depending on the style of copper used in the product and the quantity of zinc. If you take a copper ingot, divide by 1.6 and you will see that for every five millers, you have between 0.00015 and 0.00025 grams of copper. The end product of a smelter is known as a puddle, which is the sum of the puddles of copper, zinc and other alloyed metals that are recovered from the furnace.
Environmental impact
Copper is not the only scrap metal that can be obtained from the site. Some scrap metal dealers even dole out "impure" scrap. The trick is knowing where to look for these. Metal of end-of-life When scrappers are dismantling one of the many old copper wires or other twisted wires, they'll often run across copper cables or cables containing copper wires. Even in scrap yards or on the scrap market, copper can be found. For example, UK-based eBay seller Shilshole Scrapyard specialises in dismantling old lighting, speaker and other heavy electrical cables. "The area we get into is the bottom side of the cables – the wiring that runs across the inside of your wall or house," they say.
Copper wire
Copper wire is usually a product of electronics, such as mobile phones, and is often the kind of scrap you get if your rubbish is due for collection in the past few days. Once you have the wire you have to first separate it from the plastic tubing and other non-copper components. You’ll usually find this on any line with a flashing red light, but it can sometimes be difficult to locate this because your rubbish bags might be very dirty and could make locating the lines a bit of a challenge. If you do find the line with a flashing red light, please read the instructions on the side of the container before bending and breaking it.
Copper tubing
The copper tubing you are looking for should be flat, straight and stainless steel. Unbranded tubing, which includes gauges up to 3/4" in diameter, is sold in small containers of 200 – 300 pieces (even more on eBay) and are clearly marked as copper tubing. Finding copper tubing requires an Internet search, with additional research on copper prices, quality and the trend in metal prices. Copper Scrap Some scrap metal recycling yards will pay the full scrap price if you know they want to sell you a specific metal or a certain size of metal. By knowing this, you can let the truck driver know exactly what you want.
Copper pipe
It’s not surprising that the top place to hunt down copper is an underground copper pipe dump. In fact, the number one spot to source copper is in New Jersey, and the recycling industry runs on waste copper. The biggest collection sites can sell you copper pipe worth up to $500 each. Selling these rarer pieces of copper can be very lucrative, but don’t expect to make a killing. The dirt-cheap pricing is for packaging. Still, it’s better than free, and you can resell this copper for anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of its original price. Let’s say you find an old copper pipe that you can resell for $250, and you get $150 for it. That’s $50 per pound of copper. If you can source 15 pounds per week, then your hourly pay rate is $50 per hour.
Copper cable
More than anything, scrap copper is a cost-effective way to convert your home lighting or heating to solar powered. If you’re lucky enough to be in an area with good solar access, a 2 kW solar panel could provide enough electricity to run your home for a day. In reality though, this is unlikely to be the case, meaning you’re probably limited to using batteries. It’s also worth noting that copper wire isn’t always pure. No one knows exactly what goes into copper, but in a few rare cases (including our experience here) copper wire has been found to contain lead. Copper that’s deemed not suitable for lighting or heating should be either recycled or disposed of in a closed-off environment.
Copper pipes
Copper Pipe is one of the largest parts of the melting pot in recycling copper. Manufactured from cast or rolled copper, a one-inch diameter copper pipe contains approximately 75% copper and 25% zinc. A standard length of copper pipe has an installed price of about $12-14 per pound. So what makes copper pipes so valuable? The purest copper can be found in these tiny sections and they are desirable because they can be used in many electrical applications (such as in tubing for an alternator). Copper collection sites are typically located at manufacturing plants. These businesses typically hire outside contractors to strip-out the inner pipe, salvage all the stainless steel from the liquid copper and get the remains of the copper by-product.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for copper scrap, we’ve got a few great options. To start with, the USA may be the best place to look. Southwestern US states tend to have copper mineral deposits, and they’re largely under government jurisdiction. Last week we started a full metals system with some hints of what you can search for in metal prices. If you’d like to get the entire breakdown, then head over to MetalMiner.com to start your free trial. Which metals do you look for most in your searches?
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