One of the world’s largest miners is digging into America’s junk drawers, old phones and landfills. The quarry: bits of copper to meet the needs of the energy transition and data boom. Shredded cellphones, obsolete computer cables and chewed-up cars are heaped 30 feet high outside Glencore’s 97-year-old copper smelter deep in Canada’s boreal forest. There, the scrap is melted with copper concentrate from mines to produce fresh slabs of metal.
Shifting from fossil fuels to more renewable electricity promises to remake commodity markets, writes The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 21, 2024). If America requires less crude oil and coal, it will in turn need copper for everything electric. “In the next 25 years we will consume more copper than humanity has consumed until now,” says Glencore’s recycling head.
Data centers being built to facilitate AI and store smartphone videos are full of copper. So are the phones. Even if rich mine deposits are found, it takes decades to bring them online. That prevents miners from responding quickly to new demand, which leaves scrap to balance the market. Copper never goes away and is infinitely recyclable.
Miles worth are strung through homes and cars and along rights of way, carrying electricity and drinking water. But a lot sits in junk yards and landfills. When prices rise, there is more incentive to get it. Copper prices are currently among the highest ever. Nearly half of demand will be met with recycled copper by 2050, up from about a third today.
Germany’s Wieland began construction in 2022 on a $100 million recycling facility in Shelbyville, Ky. Another German firm, Aurubis, is building an $800 million recycling facility in Augusta, Ga. Glencore recently bought a failed electronics recycling facility in Arkansas and will use it, too, to gather scrap. Glencore found that the concentration of copper in landfilled auto fluff can be more than twice that found in geologic mines.
Classroom discussion questions:
- Why the demand for copper?
- What makes copper recycling attractive?
