The many benefits of recycling metal make it a highly worthwhile endeavour. From aiding the environment through reducing the need for raw metal excavation, to keeping manufacturing costs low by creating new products from reused metal, scrap recycling has become a global game changer for many vital sectors.
Today’s demand for new goods seems to be unlimited, making it important to reuse rather than use up our precious natural resources. While the positive results far outway the challenges of recycling scrap metal, it’s important to understand the difficulties the industry faces to better improve its effectiveness.
Common challenges of recycling scrap metal
As most metals can be reused with no deterioration to its quality, this makes it the perfect material for recycling. However, like the majority of influential industries, metal recycling comes with its own set of unique challenges.
While the sector has expanded immensely in recent times, there is still an inadequate amount of viable metals being recycled. An increased awareness of developing climate and environmental concerns, as well as a knowledge of correct recycling segregation, needs to be instilled to better aid this increasingly essential industry.
Separating metal from waste
One of the main challenges of recycling scrap metal is having to meticulously sort through all the products sent to the recycling centre. Without correct sorting ahead of time, other waste materials such as plastic, paper, and glass, need to be separated from reusable metal scrap.
The constant cycle of creating new electronic goods means a lot of these products end up at a recycling centre. While reusing the metal components of these electronics is highly beneficial, it’s a time consuming process to separate and sort the rare metals within.
Maximising scrap usage
Striving to constantly make the most of each piece of recycled metal is an ongoing challenge. From removing metal particles from recycled smartphones to collecting small lengths of copper from white goods, the process of reusing every viable piece of metal takes detailed planning and a dedicated team of experts.
Each commonly recycled metal can be reused over and over without any deterioration to its quality – namely steel, aluminium, and copper – making it worthwhile, albeit time consuming, to maximise each scrap.
Complexity of recycled products
While continuous design improvements to our most valued metal products and electrical devices provide extraordinary benefits to our daily lives, it makes them complicated to recycle.
The complexity of today’ metal products means they contain multiple recyclable components, but identifying and retrieving them from the many surrounding elements makes for a challenging process. Thankfully, contemporary metal recycling technologies help in separating materials, particularly ferrous from non-ferrous metals.
Expert scrap metal recycling Perth
In order to maximise the positive recycled metal output, suitable for use in a wide range of applications, enough viable metal needs to be collected. This is one of the main challenges faced by the environmentally focused scrap metal industry, and a key focus of C.D. Dodd’s dedicated team.
As leaders of custom scrap metal collection and forward-thinking recycling processes here in WA, our expansive recycling facilities and meticulous processes work to process as much viable scrap as possible into reusable product.
Contact us now to discuss our services for scrap metal recycling in Perth, or to book an efficient collection today.