Urban mining – could today’s buildings turn into tomorrow’s copper mines?

It typically takes a whole tonne of ore to produce just one kilo of pure virgin copper. That’s a tonne of material that has to be dug out of the ground, processed and purified. The rest is 999kg of waste! And finite copper resources are dwindling fast in the face of massive demand that’s intensifying all the time. Kennedy Miller, technology and sustainability manager at IT and data networking leader Brand-Rex, describes how the new concept of urban mining can help to preserve precious natural resources by breathing new life into old and forgotten copper cable.