EoW March 2009

The International Magazine for the Wire and Cable Industries

Let’s hear it for copper! I recently picked up “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things,” a book by Michael Braungart and William McDonough, and a fact caught my attention: “Copper in British incinerated waste is worth about £80million a year – and new copper is much more rare than oil.” EuroWire readers are probably already aware of this, but I simply hadn’t thought of copper in such stark terms. We worry about the decline in oil reserves, but we should be equally concerned about the decline in industrial metals. Peak copper, like peak oil, is inevitable; so I began to take an interest. I learned that, having been in use for over 10,000 years, it is estimated that 95% of all mined and smelted copper has been extracted since 1900 and, anticipating 2% growth in demand, per year, we probably have only 25 years’ worth of reserves. The Copper Development Association website states: “Copper is essential to technology, enabling peak performance from advanced microprocessors and other miniature components that drive the digital economy of today and tomorrow.” Copper is an excellent thermal and electrical conductor and, with energy efficiency increasingly in mind, these properties are of huge importance. Technology is not the only area to make demands on copper. Do you know, for example, that bacteria cannot grow on a copper surface? Copper pipes are effective against Legionnaires’ disease, and brass doorknobs disinfect themselves of most bacteria within 8 hours. Copper can combat MRSA; the US EPA has 275 alloys with over 65% copper content registered as antimicrobial materials. Ancient Egyptians (around 2,400BC) seem to have used copper for sterilising wounds and drinking water. The pressure appears to be off copper for the time being, stocks are high while prices and demand are low, but that situation is set to change as soon as the industrial economy begins to improve. In the meantime, apart from being essential in plants and animals to maintain good health, copper is heavily employed in chemistry, art, cookware and preservatives, for coinage, ammunition and biomedicine.

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It behoves us all to preserve and appreciate this amazing metal. Let’s hear it for copper!

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Gill Watson

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