5 ms·
A quick bit of googling suggests that copper ore is between 0.4% and 12% copper [1]. Just guessing, but I'd be surprised if there was anything like that much co
by remus 5y ago
A quick bit of googling suggests that copper ore is between 0.4% and 12% copper [1]. Just guessing, but I'd be surprised if there was anything like that much copper in a generic landfill site which makes me think it'd be pretty uneconomical to extract copper from landfill at the moment. I suspect the price of copper would need to be a few orders of magnitude higher before it became feasible.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/technology/copper-processing/Ores https://www.britannica.com/technology/copper-processing/Ores
- pfdietz 5y agoThe US produces 200 million tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) per year, ignoring the parts recycled or composted. Most copper production is not from recycled metal (< 10% is recycled from post consumer waste). US copper consumption is about 1.7 million tonnes per year. So, if all the copper used ends up in MSW (which is likely an exaggeration), the landfills would be nearly 1% copper.
- Retric 5y agoHouses electrical wiring is in use for decades, so it’s likely we aren’t throwing away nearly that much copper.
- pfdietz 5y agoI think the salient point is that construction & demolition debris is not included in MSW. So copper that ends up in that waste stream is not necessarily going to MSW landfills. The US produces 600 million tonnes of C&D debris each year.
- minitoar 5y agoHouse wiring is worth stripping and recycling though. Scrappers will come and buy this stuff from the demo companies.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoCounterfactual: copper is extensively scavenged. To the point that e.g. parts of Arizona have a stripping problem. That said, the quality of this debate leads me to believe an experiment might be worth it.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoUntil we can build autonomous configurable scavenging robots at scale.
- Razengan 5y agoA fleet of WALL-Es perhaps.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoTrash sifting robots seem like an interesting idea tbh. You would just need to identify the classes of items worth searching for.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y agoThey already exist and are used to sift incoming waste streams. At their simplest we’re talking about magnets over a conveyor belt.