As the need for copper rises, cable manufacturers recycle more

abcnews.go.com:

In an industrial suburb of Montreal, sheets of copper move along a conveyor belt suspended four stories above the floor of a foundry — a metals plant — until they drop into a lava-hot furnace

MONTREAL — In an industrial suburb of Montreal, sheets of copper move along a conveyor belt suspended four stories above the floor of a foundry — a metals plant — until they drop into a lava-hot furnace. Next come pieces of discarded copper wire.

Out of the furnace comes liquid copper, alight with green fire. It travels to a second furnace and from there, a river of orange copper flows out, to be shaped into copper rods, the raw material for copper wire.

This Nexans mill has made copper rod from ore for nearly a century. But now it also makes an increasing amount of it from used copper, with the rods containing some 14% recycled metal. It hopes to get to 20%.

“We say to our customers: Your waste of today, your scrap of today is your energy of tomorrow, so bring back your scrap,” said Nexans CEO Christopher Guérin.

Across the industry, manufacturers have been reusing and recycling some degree of copper for many years. Now they’re stepping up these efforts as the need for the metal is projected to nearly double by 2035.

It’s partly due to a move away from fossil fuels to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a growing movement to power buildings, vehicles and manufacturing operations with clean electricity, to “electrify everything” — which uses more copper.

Building construction, cell phones and data centers account for the other half of the increase in demand.

Every ton of copper that is recycled means some 200 tons of rock that won't need to be mined, though the amount depends on how rich the ore is. That's