Recycling of waste electrical cables

Abstract

Today, recycling and recovery of valuable metals from all sorts of waste are the most commonly discussed and heavily researched fields. One of the main reasons of this is both the global warming and ever increasing amounts of waste and scrap material. Severe regulations and legislations are passed in developed countries’ parliaments in order to recycle the produced goods when their economic lives are over. A steady decrease is observed in our natural resources due to changes in our habits of consumption, in parallel to the increasing world population. Therefore, recycling of valuable waste by decreasing the amount of material consumed constitutes an important agenda.1 Changes in the habits of consumption cause the formation of various sorts of waste material. One of those various waste materials is “electronic equipment waste”, briefly addressed as e-waste. Due to the unprecedented development of today’s technologies, electronic equipments which have faster, more efficient, more stylish, and more economical marketing trends will be either incapable of working in one or six-year-period or repairing them will be more costly than their new ones. Thus, the electronic equipment once bought with a high price, will be either given away to the scrap dealers or thrown out to the garbage unconsciously, as the developing technology is presented more economically. That is how the problem of modern age, e-waste, was born.2 It is obvious that our natural resources are limited and will be shortly exhausted unless properly used. Developed countries which realized that the resources were being jeopardized by the energy crisis, conducted research and developed methods for collecting and recycling wastes, in order to prevent the extravagance and conserve the natural resources. With this in mind, the member countries of the European Economic Community regulated that the recycling of electronic equipments’ wastes an imperative action. By the same token, the infrastructure work is being conducted in Turkey and some important arrangements are being accomplished.3 In a general sense, recycling concept is actually transforming the waste to secondary raw material by some physical and chemical processes and re-joining to the production process.4 Waste cable recycling is widely utilized both in Turkey and in the world. Waste cables are important source raw material in terms of their non-ferrous metal content. In Germany alone, about 150.000tons of waste cable is generated annually. Cables that materialize as a result of repairs, telephone line cables, or cables that are produced defectively are some them. Numerous varieties exist in isolation materials, other than the copper, aluminum, lead, and steel; namely, PE and rubber coatings, various kinds PVC’s, woven plastics, etc.1 Environment and Forestry Ministry of Turkey published a legislation regarding the collecting, recycling, and proper disposal of e-wastes. As of 1 July 2012, producers will be responsible for financing the e-wastes that would materialize as a result of utilization of every product that is marketed.5 According to these legislations, the most appropriate processes must be developed and the best separation methods must be utilized for the recycling of e-wastes.