Reuse & Recycle Metal & Building Materials

Often the best chats and sharing happen on twitter. Yesterday I was chatting to some other property types about metal recycling. When we do developments we always recycle our metal. It’s a great practice to get into. You get feel all virtuous that your are doing your bit for the planet because less stuff will end up in land fill and, there is the added benefit that you get money for old metal!

Copper High Price

The cost of some metals- in particular copper- has shot up recently. You are now looking at about £4 per kilo. So, obviously things like old copper water tanks and all the associated pipe work can net you in the region of £100. ( A new one will cost you around £200.) You can also recycle old bits of lead pipe and of course wiring, which has copper and other metals inside valuable.

Top Tips!

Now, a couple of top tips here ( courtesy of Jools ), if you have old wiring and spend a few minutes stripping it of the plastic outer coating, you will get more for it at the recycle place because they call this ‘first grade’ metal. In other words they don’t have to go to the bother of stripping it so it saves them time, hence you get more cash. Along the same lines, take the old foam jackets off boiler tanks for the same reason. They come off very easily and doing this can add up to another £15 or so to a tank recycle.You can also recycle older style lead downpipes etc.

Reuse & Recycle Centres

The London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) announced last year that it would fund £500,000 over three years to help set up a reuse centre selling construction waste including bricks and tiles in Croydon, South London. Unwanted building materials from housing developments and DIY stores are collected, transported to the Croydon centre and sorted through for resale. It’s open to the public or members of the building trade. More information can be found here.

This is such a great idea. Personally I would like to see more of this kind of thing in the building trade, which is well known for it’s wanton waste attitude.

There are other ways to get rid of stuff for free instead of sending it to landfill. Freecycle is a good place to get rid of things which may have been hangng around an old renovation project. Of course many builders etc now sell their extra tiles on the likes of eBay too. All this helps to keep costs down on a project and helps the environment too. What could be better than that?

That is what I like to call a win win.If you have any more tips on recycling metal or building materials please comment below so we can all share and do our bit for the enviroment.

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