Home MRC Official NewsWhat's my time worth with copper?

What's my time worth with copper?

Written by Brian Silver | 10 November 2011

It’s August in Georgia, the sun is blazing at 100 degrees and you’re loading up your truck with metals to take to the scrap center. You can either exhaust your entire day and a whole gas tank tinkering around town scrounging for copper to get $230, or you can spend half the hours and a third of your tank finding mass amounts of other metals like aluminum and steel for $180, with a few extra hours to relax by the pool. How would you like to spend your afternoon?

Today in the metal industry, copper, aluminum, and steel are the most popular scrapped materials sold to recycling centers, with copper returning the highest price upon trade. But is it returning the highest amount for investment?

Aluminum and steel can be found in household items such as appliances or in old vehicles. Recyclables like these are also frequently found at construction sites. Copper, however, is not quite as easy to get a hold of. Although it can be found in air conditioner units, power lines, and sub stations all over Atlanta, it is also heavily secured. The circumstances are not likely for copper to be given up by someone who is taking out the trash, unlike they would be for other materials.

To obtain enough copper amounts to make a profit, an individual would need to form relationships and work out deals with the watchdogs of these high copper sites. Even with such connections, the amount of search time, heavy lifting, and gas dollars invested seems to outweigh the buying price it can be recycled for.

Unfortunately, the combination of the high trade rate of copper plus the difficulty of acquiring it has resulted in an unruly copper theft fad.

People stealing copper are breaking into communication towers and power grids just for $1.50-$2.00 a pound.* I personally hold the price of my future at a higher value. Theft of copper can have devastating consequences on one’s life, by death or incarceration. Not to mention, the amount of damage done to walls and buildings during burglaries far exceeds the cost paid upon trade.

Often times these copper-conniving bandits do not fully understand the risk they are placing in the lives of innocent bystanders. The ripple effect begins with the stealing of the metal, say, from a neighborhood’s phone lines. This leaves individuals in a state of emergency without access to 911, resulting in traumatic effects for endangered bodies. In October 2010, two West Virginia copper thieves were charged with first degree murder due to a partner-in-crime being fatally electrocuted during the break-in of the American Electric Power Substation.

As steel and aluminum may be sold for a lesser price, it seems they actually provide both a higher and safer return on investment. The crackdown on stealing copper alone is not worth the extra buck per pound, and neither is a life. Even when scrapping efforts are kept legal, sellers still find that the phrase “Money is time” will always defeat copper’s expensive argument.