Assessing the recycling efficiency of copper from end-of-life products in Western Europe

Recognizing that the recycling of copper and its alloying elements is often not well documented or fully understood, this paper quantifies the end-of-life recycling efficiency rate of copper using the copper flow model developed by the International Copper Study Group (ICSG). The model is complemented by results from a flow study for Western Europe in 1999. The ICSG model is based on a simultaneous use of a "Lifetime Approach" (based on historical end use data and average product lifetimes), an "End-of-Life Approach" (based on reported, measured or estimated end-of-life product flows) and a "Scrap Balance Approach (based on reported scrap use data). The "Lifetime Approach" predicts a copper reservoir in use of similar to 78 million tonnes of copper and alloys. for Western Europe. For 1999, it was estimated that the copper scrap availability and the old scrap recovery amounted to similar to 2.7 million tonnes and similar to 1.6 million tonnes of copper and alloys, respectively. The corresponding end-of-life recycling efficiency rate for end-of-life copper and copper alloy products in Western Europe in 1999 was estimated to be around 63% in the end-of-life approach, 64% in the lifetime approach, and 67% according to the scrap balance approach excluding outflows to other metal loops, and 69%, 70%, and 73%, respectively, including all identified outflows to other metal recycling loops. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.