For thousands of years, metal recycling has been existing not just as an environmental effort but as a profitable economic activity. Today, the activities of collecting, sorting, preparing, transporting and reprocessing scrap metal are considered to be even more important than the economics of refining and mining ores. Nickel alloy recycling is one of those most valued metal recycling with more and more infrastructure is created to gather and process the metal. One of the key reason is the fact that nickel and nickel-containing alloys have the ability to be either converted to a different yet valuable form or reprocessed to return to their original form.
The most common examples of nickel alloy recycling include nickel from recycled batteries and nickel-containing stainless steel scrap reprocessed to make new stainless steel. The increasing value for recycled nickel and nickel alloys is not surprising, mainly because of the efficiency of nickel regarded as one of the highest. To be specific, about 68% of this metal used in consumer products is being recycled and starts its new life while some of it goes back into the carbon steel loop. Unfortunately, there is still some amount of nickel that ended up in landfills, particularly those that are in waste electronic equipment.
Nickel and nickel alloy recycling is a crucial factor in the life cycle of the metal, which also significantly contributes to the world’s sustainability goals. In fact, the demand for this recycled metal has been on the rise and is highly regarded as a great solution in complementing primary production. Since the declaration was made by the metal industry players in 2006, the progress of the signed commitment is starting to take off. Policymakers, manufacturers, and product engineers have been adopting policies and programs that are geared towards adopting a life cycle’s approach in metal recycling.
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