As we are becoming more and more aware about the environment and shifting towards sustainability, we realize that to produce green energy we need more metals to set up our power generators based on wind turbines, solar panels or hydro electricity. All these power plants or power stations would require metals, and shortage of metal could give rise to more concerns for the environmentalists and industries around the world.

Why recycle metals?

Metal can be used again and again without having to worry about losing efficiency or its properties. Rare metal, such as gold, copper, silver, aluminum and such do not lose their original properties if they are broken and reconstructed. Therefore, collecting waste metal or reusable metal and reconstructing them and using them again could reduce the need for mining. The sustainable way of using metal is to use them or mine them at a rate where they can be regenerated and therefore conserving the amount of metals, reducing the need for fresh raw materials and reducing mining of metals from underground.

The amount of metals present on earth and in the mines is limited. It takes far more energy and costs more to dig for more metals underground than to reuse the metal already been used on the ground, instead of throwing them away and filling up the landfill area. Digging up metal also causes pollution and carbon emission from the digging equipments and machinery, which depletes the environment as well.

How to recycle metal

Recycling metal form your household waste or equipments or waste from commercial sites is easy. You will find several items containing metal around your house that you can recycle, such as aluminum cans of drinks such as soda, beer, juices, etc. your old appliances, or old equipments, utensils, furniture, and so on. Once you gather enough metal to recycle, look for a metal scrap yard in your area. You can look for a scrap yard near you by checking on the internet or calling your waste management company and ask them how you can recycle your household metals. It is possible to sell your metal waste form home or start your own metal recycling business if you can get a crew together for tearing down old buildings and construction sites for scrap metal or collecting scrap and waste form new construction sites and selling them for profit.

The construction site builders or contractors will virtually pay you to tear the old building or collect all the scrap metal from their new construction sites and haul them away so that their sites are cleaned up from scrap or waste metal. This can be a double profit for you because you will be paid by the scrap yard as well when you bring the scrap and waste metal to them for selling. Usually, you will find several kinds of metal, varying in prices. There are both, ferrous and non ferrous metals.

Metals needed for power generation

In the power generating plants, metals like dysprosium (DY) and neodymium (Nd) are needed, and demand for these metals are growing faster than they are being produced. To produce clean reusable energy from wind turbines or solar panels. The motor vehicles use motors or dynamos that also use these metals. Some of the products we use on a daily basis, such as your mobile phone, or computer, also contain these metals in addition to other rare metals such as aluminum copper or gold.

Although these metals are found on the surface of the earth, they are not so easy to come by and therefore, so far, only China has been able to supply all the raw materials to the rest of the world. However, China will soon restrict their exports of raw materials to the world, and these metals will become even harder to find.

Metal is a rare mineral on earth and it is not unlimited by any means, and that is why recycling metal is very important to reduce mining and conserve the amount of metal on earth. Mining metal will soon bring a shortage of metals around the globe, and so we need to recycle all the rare metals of the earth. All the necessary modern equipments, electronics, clean power generators, and so on, use some kind of metal, which can be reused again and again, without losing their effectiveness or properties, if we can recycle them and benefit from them in two ways, by conserving the nature and by reducing mining of new raw materials. This is the most sustainable way that can save wastage of metal that we need for our everyday life.

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Source: Environmental Professionals Network