Nearly everybody knows and practices good habits when it comes to household recycling, but scrap metal recycling is the exception. Unless it’s in the form of electronics and beverage cans, many people simply don’t have much waste metal to throw away. 

Household Scrap Metal Sources 
If you have a failed appliance or a junk car with no value, the energy you put into finding a recycling center for disposal will have an enormously positive effect on the earth. You may even earn enough cash to make it worthwhile. 

Preserves Resources 
Regardless of where it comes from, recycling metal saves countless natural resources. It reduces the demand for raw materials from the metal mines, which are environmentally destructive. Open pit mines for copper create vast piles of pilings on which very little will grow. The mines use tremendous amounts of water and fuel. Recycled metal is one of the few materials that can be used over and over with no reduction in the quality of the material. The energy it saves adds up. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough electricity to power a television for three hours. 

Reduces Emissions 
Mining for metals uses tremendous amounts energy from mining it out of the ground, to extracting it from the ore. The industry uses heavy equipment to dig the metals out of the ground. These huge machines are true gas guzzlers. If the power plant that fuels the mine and the smelter burns coal, the creation of new metal creates even more climate-changing emissions.  Recycling scrap metal also uses resources, but it’s nowhere near the fuel or electricity that mining requires. Every can or piece of scrap metal you keep out of the dumpster keeps the planet and the atmosphere cleaner. 

Reduces Related Pollution 
Building new mines and supplying them with the equipment they require and the power plants they need costs a tremendous amount of money and natural resources. The heavy equipment alone runs in the tens of millions of dollars and power plants aren’t cheap, either. Manufacturing heavy equipment itself uses tremendous amounts of natural resources, as does power plant production. By recycling all metals, you keep the prices lower because it increases the supply of materials that are cheaper to produce than the virgin material. 

If you’re looking for ways to lower your environmental footprint, look no further than taking your scrap metal to a suitable recycling center. Doing so protects the earth and the air and will put some money in your pocket.