Teach Your Family to Save the World

Making Money With Metal And Scrap Recycling

Metal recycling is a booming industry, and the kinds of materials that you can sell for scrap or recycling are growing all the time. One of the most sought-after materials for recycling is copper in just about any form, and while copper scrap can be profitable, you need to know how to maximize your profits if you hope to make money with scrap metal sales. 

Non-Ferrous Copper

Copper scrap has specific properties that make it a valuable metal for recycling. Copper is a non-ferrous metal that can be used and reprocessed repeatedly without losing the properties of the metal in any way. This makes it valuable because copper producers can use some scrap and some new ore to produce new copper products, reducing the production costs and extending the supply of copper ore that is available. 

The electrical conductive properties of copper are second only to silver, making it one of the best options for solid and stranded wiring used in homes, cars, electronics, and just about anything that requires wired connections. Copper is also an excellent thermal conductor and is well suited to making coils for heating and cooling systems and plumbing for homes, and it even has some applications in the automotive industry. 

Recycling Copper

When you have copper scrap that you want to recycle, there are some things you should do to increase the price you get for the material. Copper is more valuable as a pure metal, and typically the scrap yard will rate pure copper as clean and pay the highest price for it. Clean copper means wiring without insulation on it, copper pipe without solder, or soft copper tubing without brass nuts or fittings still on it. 

Taking the time to remove anything that would contaminate the copper during the processing will maximize the profit you make from the material. When the market is at its peak, it could significantly affect the material price. Stripping the coating off the solid copper wire or cutting solder joints out of old plumbing pipe takes a little extra time, but if you are recycling the material as a way to make a living, that time spent on prep can make a difference. 

Many recyclers will pay for copper that is not prepped, but it is rated as dirty copper at that point, and the price is often much lower for the material because the scrap yard will have to sort and clean the metal before they sell it to the copper producer. This added labor cuts into the recycler's profit, so if you do the work, they will pay for it, but if you don't, you will have to take a lower price for the material.