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The work carried out by the scrap recovery agent
is essential in recycling. The recovery agent collects, selects, processes
and sells the material so that it can be consumed by industry. The
majority of recovery agents tend to specialise in materials, for
example only dealing in non-ferrous metals. This is done in this
way because correct handling of the material requires heavily investing
in machinery, along with the need for specialist knowledge of each
market. The recovery industry now moves a great deal of material,
with important capital transactions, very much different from what
it was when the business began.
By definition, the recovery agent uses machinery and processes to
process ferrous and non-ferrous metals (as well as other metals),
in such a way that their main produce are bales of material to be
used in subsequent alloying processes in industry.
Metal recovery agents buy all kinds of product scrap from manufacturers.
This scrap can range from cans to aircraft, demolished buildings
or bridges. They also buy metal from other recovery agents who either
don't deal in non-ferrous metals or who are retailers and sell the
material on to wholesalers.
Recycling of non-ferrous materials represents an important source
of new raw materials, which are needed in industry, with a large
saving in energy. For example, nearly half of the lead that is used
is recovered, and this recovered lead represents a 65% saving in
the energy that would have otherwise been required to manufacture
new material.
In the case of aluminium, energy saving are 95% of the energy that
would have been required to process bauxite, and recovered copper
provides a saving of up to 85% of the energy that is required to
extract this raw material from mines.
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