There is a wide range of reasons why you should refine and recover your metal rather than wasting it. Recycling metal reduces pollution, saves resources, reduces waste going to landfills and prevents the destruction of habitats from mining new ore. Scrap metal is a continuous resource. Because it can be re-melted and reshaped into new products countless times, recycled metal is a resource that will never be depleted. The production of new metal releases a far greater amount of greenhouse gas emissions compared with making products from recycled metal. These emissions may influence climate change and may also cause harmful levels of air pollution in cities, resulting in potential respiratory health problems for the residents.

Recovering precious metals from end-of -life products can also generate a good extra income. During these uncertain economic times investors have fallen back to the more stable commodities market, with precious metal prices (Gold and Silver in particular) rocketing as a result. Gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals can still be mined from natural sources. But mining is very costly and in many cases, it is becoming easier and more cost-effective to recover those metals from devices that already contain them. A ton of recycled cell phones actually contains more gold than a ton of gold ore that comes from most mines.

How to identify metals to refine

You can easily use a magnet to separate ferrous from not ferrous metals. Ferrous metals contain iron which in most cases makes it magnetic. If a metal is non-ferrous it doesn’t have iron in it, so it won’t stick to a magnet. Various other tests can be made to determine the type of metal and if it can be recycled or not. The most common is the appearance test, which consists in studying the physical features of the metal. Sometimes this can be quite difficult as there are metals that look similar to each other. Gold and brass, for instance, are often being confused as they have a very similar colour. After a deeper inspection, however, you should notice that gold is heavier and brass produces a bell like vibrating sound if you try to hit it. Other useful tests are the fracture test, which helps you identify a metal by analysing its broken part, and the spark test, which looks at the spark produced by touching the metal to a grinder.