Chuck Yung
EASA Senior Technical Support Specialist 

The earliest recycler was probably the village blacksmith beating swords into plowshares. In the scheme of things, that didn’t recycle much tonnage of iron. Recycling has become quite a buzzword in the last few decades, and it seems fashionable in some communities to save milk cartons and newspapers. It gives us a warm fuzzy feeling without really being inconvenient. Of course, those same communities use disposable pens, disposable razors and disposable diapers. At least their hearts are in the right place. 

One of my personal heroes is Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president from 1901 to 1909. There are many reasons to admire the man, but high on my list is the fact that he established 500 million acres (200 million hectares) of wilderness/national forests and otherwise protected wildlands. Roosevelt recognized before most of his contemporaries the value of wilderness. Today, wild places are in short supply, and most everyone recognizes the unique value of such places. You might not backpack, fish or hunt, but the chances are that certain places ignite your imagination: Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Acadia, the Rockies, Copper Canyon in Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, Antigua, the Alps. 

The fewer resources we must dig from the earth, the longer we will have such places to enjoy. So recycling is important to us, to our children and to their children. 

There is one industry that has been quietly recycling since before the start of the previous century. That’s right – over 100 years of recycling. What industry is that? It’s our industry – electrical equipment repair. Electric motors and generators have been rewound since the late 1800s. The propensity for recycling may be a fad for some, but rebuilders of electrical equipment have been recycling for a very long time. 

During that century+, the electrical repair industry has been responsible for recycling a staggering amount of copper. How much copper? During 2018, U.S. recyclers recovered over 959,000 tons (870,000 metric tons) of copper. More than one-third of the copper used today has been recycled. That’s 870,000 metric tons of copper that did not have to be mined from the earth. Given the recovery rate for copper today is under 3% by weight, it means nearly 30 million metric tons of land that did not have to be dug up and altered forever in the quest for minerals. Electrical equipment repairers have played a significant role in protecting Earth's scarce resources. Our industry has saved an incredible amount of natural resources. The figures for copper – gleaned from United States Geological Survey sources -- are impressive enough. During the rewind process, copper windings are replaced with new ones. When an electric motor is rebuilt, the steel frame and components are nearly all reused. Bearings and incidental parts are replaced, but by weight between 92% - 98% of the original motor is reused.

Considering that our industry rebuilds 2.4 million electric motors* annually (roughly 120 million total hp), the amount of steel and iron involved is enormous. The estimated weight of electric motors repaired during 2018 alone was 360 million pounds. Since the start of the previous century (1900), estimates for the copper recycled in North America alone are over 200 million tons. Had all those motors been discarded instead of repaired, the total landfill volume would be roughly enough to cover Rhode Island with a stack of motors 20 feet (nearly seven meters) deep. Melted down, it would still result in a layer of iron and copper nearly six feet (two meters) thick over the same area. Given that Rhode Island is 1,575 square miles (4,079 square kilometers), that would be a big landfill - no matter where you put it. For my European friends, Luxembourg is about the same size as Rhode Island. The total horsepower of electric motors rebuilt during the past century was over 20 billion. The dollar savings to the industry is substantial too. Estimates for the savings as opposed to replacement cost, for that century, are $60 billion (55 billion €) in today’s dollars. Not a bad record for an industry that is represented in most industrialized municipalities worldwide by EASA service centers.

*This information is from expertmarketresearch.com.

Categories: Technical topics, Miscellaneous

Tags: Recycling

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