Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9 – 26

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The contemporary European copper cycle: The

characterization of technological copper cycles
T.E. Graedel a,*, M. Bertram a,c, K. Fuse a, R.B. Gordon b, R. Lifset a,
H. Rechberger a,d, S. Spatari a
a
Center for Industrial Ecology, School of Forestry and En6ironmental Studies, Yale Uni6ersity, New Ha6en, CT 06511, USA
b
Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale Uni6ersity, New Ha6en, CT 06511, USA
c
Department of Industrial Sustainability, Institute of Technology Cottbus, Cottbus, Germany
d
ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Chair of Resource and Waste Management, CH 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

Copper is an example of an anthropogenically utilized material that is of interest to both resource economists and
environmental scientists. It is a widely employed industrial metal, and one that in certain forms and concentrations
is moderately biotoxic. It is also one that may be potentially supply-limited. A comprehensive accounting of the
anthropogenic mobilization and use of copper must treat a series of life stages: mining and processing, fabrication,
utilization, and end of life. Reservoirs in which copper resides include the lithosphere, ore and ingot processing
facilities, fabricators, at least a dozen major uses, several intentional and default stockpiles, landfills, and the
environment. The flow rates among those reservoirs constitute the cycle. If a non-global cycle is being constructed,
imports to and exports from the region of interest must also be included. In this paper we discuss the characteristics
of each of the components of anthropogenic copper cycles, as well as generic approaches to the acquisition and
evaluation of data over space and time. Data quality and data utility are evaluated, noting that information relevant
to technology and resource policy is easier to acquire than is information relevant to human health and ecosystem
concerns, partly because the spatial scale required by the latter is considerably smaller and the flow rates rarely
analyzed and reported. Despite considerable data limitations, we conclude that information is sufficiently available
and the data sufficiently accurate to characterize copper cycles at a variety of spatial scales. © 2002 Elsevier Science
B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Copper reservoirs; Copper flows; Technological cycles; Substance flow analysis

1. Contemporary copper cycles: a status report

The study of resource cycles has a rich history

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-203-432-9733; fax: + 1-
203-432-5556
E-mail address: thomas.graedel@yale.edu (T.E. Graedel).
in the environmental sciences, where the results
have aided the understanding of ecosystem struc-
ture, the carbon cycle, the hydrologic cycle, and
the CFC –ozone relationship. Comprehensive re-

0921-8009/02/$ - see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 0 1 - 5
10 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
source cycle analysis is less common in the re-
source economics community, which tends rather
to emphasize cycle components such as extraction
magnitudes or import/export flows. The environ-
mental science and resource economics ap-
proaches intersect where dissipative flows from
anthropogenic materials enter the environment, or
where major energy consumption occurs. In those
cases, cycles are vital tools in understanding how
the technological aspects of an economy operate
and how they might be restructured, if desired.
A technological material cycle applies to a spe-
cific region, and encompasses the sequence of
technological life stages through which the mate-
rial passes. Also included by necessity are sources
(extraction or importation) and sinks (losses to
the biosphere and exportation). Thus, technologi-
cal cycles can be developed for an urban region, a
country, a continent, or the planet. This definition
excludes, however, cycles that are wholly natural,
and those dealing with fewer than the complete
sequence of life stages (e.g. the study of material
flows in a factory). Unlike natural cycles, in which
even recognition that a particular flow exists may
be challenging (e.g. mercury emissions to the at-
mosphere from the oceans; Betts, 2001), the iden-
tification of flows in technological cycles is usually
straightforward even if the determination of their
magnitudes may not be.
Those who study biogeochemical cycles have
defined a consistent terminology (Rodhe, 1992),
which is generally suitable as well for anthropo-
genically dominated materials. A reser6oir is a
compartment or group of like compartments that
contains the material of interest. The amount of
material contained is the stock. A budget is the
balance sheet of all inputs and outputs (the flows)
to a reservoir. A cycle is a system of two or more
connected reservoirs, where a large part of the
material is transferred through the system in a
cyclic fashion. In characterizing cycles of anthro-
pogenically dominated materials, it is customary
to treat environmental reservoirs (wetlands,
landfills, etc.) as accumulati6e reser6oirs, since geo-
logical recycling from those reservoirs can only
occur on time scales longer than the span of
human societies.
The most common approach in both biogeo-
chemical and anthropogenic research is the char-
acterization of static cycles— those that evaluate
stocks and flows at a single interval of time,
usually a year or the average of several years. In
actuality, cycles of both kinds are dynamic— ma-
terial moves through some reservoirs faster than it
moves through others, and perturbations to the
flows occur and propagate through the system.
(In anthropogenically dominated systems, pertur-
bations results from economic fluctuations, new
uses for materials, and so forth.) The amount of
information and analysis is much greater in the
dynamic case, but the result is a much richer
description of the system of interest.
Copper is an example of an anthropogenically
utilized material that is of interest to both re-
source economists and environmental scientists. It
is a widely employed industrial metal, and one
that in certain forms and concentrations is moder-
ately biotoxic (e.g. Hall et al., 1998; Lander and
Lindeström, 1999). It is also one that may be
potentially supply-limited (Kesler, 1994; Tilton,
2001). The characterization of a copper cycle re-
quires deriving information for a series of life
stages (which can be thought of as composite
reservoirs): mining and processing, fabrication,
use, and waste management, as shown in Fig. 1.
A fifth anthropogenic reservoir— secondary
materials management (e.g. dismantlers, scrap
dealers, etc.)— is implied by Fig. 1, but not in-
cluded there for lack of data. These actors per-
form such end-of-life functions as separating
mixed materials, or agglomerating small amounts
of the same material prior to shipping it for
reprocessing (Sagar and Frosch, 1997). The re-
sults of their efforts are reflected in the flows of
recycled materials to smelters and refiners, for
which data are commonly reported.
A central topic in developing a copper cycle (or
any material cycle) is determining the degree of
completeness and accuracy that is required. In
practice, the accuracy with which the flows must
be determined depends upon the purpose for
which the cycle is to be used. For convenience, we
suggest three classes of accuracy:
“ For use in initial characterization: flow magni-
tude accuracies of 9 50% enable major flows
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26 11

to be recognized and compared, and serious data
deficiencies to be identified
“ For use in detailed e6aluation: flow magnitude
accuracies of 925% enable environmental risks
and policy frameworks to be evaluated with
reasonable confidence
“ For use in policy implementation: flow magnitude
accuracies of 910% permit agreements and
regulatory instruments to be negotiated with
reasonable confidence.
It is clear that the transport and fate of every atom
cannot be chronicled, and it is equally clear that at
some point omissions and inaccuracies will render
a work useless. We adopt in this regard a pragmatic
‘rule of thumb’: that a satisfactory cycle is one that
captures at least 80% of the flow magnitudes to and
from the six reservoirs explicitly designated above—
the four anthropogenic reservoirs, a composite
source reservoir, and a composite sink reservoir. In
many cases, this will require that a number of
subflows be analyzed, as with the discard flows (from
use to waste management) shown in Fig. 1.
There have been very few attempts to study
comprehensive cycles for copper. Those of which
we are aware are summarized in Table 1. Five are
at the national level, one at the urban level. None
incorporate all life stages and dissipative flows. It
is clear that a broader based and geographically
more complete approach is needed. We therefore
devise a framework for characterization of contem-
porary copper cycles, with the following uses in
mind:

Fig. 1. The stocks and flows structure for a generic copper cycle. Life cycle processes, sub-processes, flows, and reservoirs are shown,
including the import and export of commodities and finished products. Flows exiting specific known sub-processes are indicated. If
the point from which a flow leaves a sub-process is not precisely known, the flow is shown leaving from the larger process (e.g. the
I&HW flow is not allocated to specific sub-processes such as Copper Fabrication, rather it is assigned to the more general process
of Fabrication and Manufacturing. The dashed line indicates the system boundary. Abbreviations are described in the text.
12 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
Table 1
Existing contemporary copper cycles
Region Year Reference
Japan 1997 Simada, et al. (1999)
Netherlands 1995 Van der Voet, et al. (2000)
Stockholm 1995 Bergbäck, et al. (2001)
Sweden 1990 Lander and Lindeström (1999)
USA 1990 Zeltner, et al. (1999)
USA 1995 Copper Development Association, (1999)
“ To identify the stocks and flows of copper from
extraction to end of life, in order to discover
opportunities for increasing the efficiency of
industrial copper utilization.
“ To evaluate the magnitudes of dissipative flows
to the environment.
“ To develop information for the consideration
of resource policy and environmental policy
initiatives.
This is the first of a series of papers (Spatari et
al., 2002; Bertram et al., 2002, Rechberger and
Graedel, 2002) that examine different aspects of
the contemporary and historical cycles of copper.
2. The mining and processing of copper
2.1. Mining
Copper ore consists of a mixture of copper-
bearing minerals and the accompanying barren
rock (the latter is known as gangue). The primary
copper minerals are copper sulfides, and the most
important of these is chalcopyrite, CuFeS2
(Kesler, 1994). Weathering forms copper oxide
minerals from the chalcopyrite near the top of
most deposits of copper ore, and enriches the
copper content below the surface. Most of the
rich deposits of copper oxide ores had been mined
out by the early 20th century, leaving sulfide ore
as the principal source of copper. The grade of
copper ore at a mine or in a mining region
decreases as ore is removed (Fig. 2), sometimes
dropping below that of gangue left from earlier
mining. The richest ores occur as veins of copper-
bearing minerals and are mined by underground
methods. Open pits are used to extract low-grade
Comments
Data on specific components 1980–1998
Concentration on waste flows during use
Concentration on waste flows
Excellent dissipative flow detail
Stock and flow both estimated
Processing emphasis, no dissipative flows
ores which consist of copper minerals dispersed in
large amounts of gangue. Open pit mines gradu-
ally supplanted most underground mines for cop-
per ore during the 20th century.
Mine overburden is the rock that must be re-
moved to gain access to the ore. It is of substan-
tial magnitude, often as much as or more than the
gangue that is discarded (Adriaanse et al., 1997).
In underground mining the ratio of overburden to
ore is usually less than one. In open pit mining
this ratio, known as the ‘stripping ratio,’ may be
as high as 60 (Chapman and Roberts, 1983).
Overburden, which contains little or no copper,
would ordinarily be left as near the mine site as
possible. Some may be used to backfill under-
ground mines. These ‘hidden flows’ are important
to comprehensive energy and environmental
analyses (e.g. Matthews et al., 2000), but are not
significant to copper budgeting so are not further
addressed in the present work.
Fig. 2. Grade of copper ore (%) mined and milled in the
United States, based on data collected by the US Bureau of
Mines. Grade was computed from yield using the recovery
percentages shown in Fig. 3.
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
2.2. Milling
Ore is milled to separate the metal-bearing min-
eral mechanically from the gangue. Milling is
done as close to its mine as possible so as to avoid
the cost of hauling barren material. The ore is
crushed and ground to liberate the copper miner-
als, which are then separated from the gangue by
froth flotation, sometimes aided by heavy media
separation or other techniques, to produce con-
centrate containing about 25% copper. Concen-
trate may be processed at a nearby smelter or
shipped to distant smelters, sometimes in interna-
tional trade. At the Kennecott works in Utah, the
most modern in the US, two mills deliver concen-
trate to the smelter by slurry pipelines (George et
al., 1999).
The waste from froth flotation (known as ‘tails’
or ‘tailings’) consists of fine particles of gangue,
residual amounts of copper minerals, traces of
flotation agents, and water. Mill operators store
their tailings in ponds, often behind earth-fill
dams, as near the mill site as possible. Some mill
waste is coarse enough to use as aggregate or to
construct tailing-pond dams (Hancock and Pons,
1999).
Because nearly all copper ores mined and
milled through the 20th century contained less
than 2% copper, large quantities of tailings have
been left at mill sites. For example, by 1957, 600
acres of Flin Flon Lake in Manitoba held 30 Tg
of copper –zinc tailings, the product of many
years of mining (Convey et al., 1957). In Zambia,
where copper mining began in 1913 and expanded
rapidly in the 1930s, the waste ponds now contain
1.2 Pg of tailings (Hancock and Pons, 1999).
Between 1910 and 1981 at least 7.4 Pg of copper
tailings were left at mill sites in the United States
(Coppa, 1984).
Since the separation of the valuable mineral
from the gangue in milling is imperfect, tailings
contain copper. The data in Fig. 3 show that
improvements in milling methods since the early
20th century have roughly kept pace with the
decrease in the grade of ore mined, that is, the
recovery ratio has changed relatively little in the
last 80 years while the average copper content of
tailings has decreased from about 0.75% to about
13
Fig. 3. Mean recovery of copper in milling (%) and mean
grade (copper content) of tailings (parts per 10 000) through
the 20th century. The data are described by Gordon, 2002.
0.09%. There is an inverse relation between the
grade of the concentrate made at a mill and the
recovery rate from the ore (Hancock and Pons,
1999). Recovery rates depend on the particular
minerals present in the ore, the investment made
in milling equipment, and the requirements of the
smelter taking the concentrate. Thus, copper
losses in tailings vary greatly among different
mills. One mill in Arizona found it profitable to
make coarse tailing that contained 0.26% Cu in-
stead of fine waste containing 0.06% Cu since the
coarse material could be sold as aggregate to the
state highway department (Hancock and Pons,
1999).
Because early milling techniques were ineffi-
cient, mining companies sometimes rework old
tailings. An early example was the Utah Leasing
Company, which built a flotation plant in New-
house, Utah, in 1918 to rework tailings from the
Cactus Mine that contained 0.75% copper
(Megraw, 1918). The Quincy Mine stamp mills
dumped 2 Tg of tailings into Torch Lake in upper
Michigan between 1868 and 1928. It subsequently
dredged these tailings, reprocessed them, and re-
turned them to the lake (Gordon and Malone,
1994). The Calumet & Hecla mines recovered 21
Gg of copper from tailings in Torch Lake with
improved flotation methods between 1917 and
1920 (Hyde, 1998). In 1968 the Nchanga mill in
Zambia was losing 54 Gg of copper a year to its
tailings. By 1974 it had a solvent extraction plant
treating 10 Gg/y of tailings to recover 100 kt of
14 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26

copper per year (Wills, 1988). In the US, 15.6 Gg in the newer procedure of flash smelting as in the
(0.8 % of the total production) of copper was reverberatory furnace. Where reverberatory slag
made by leaching tailings in 1997; in 1998 this had typically contained 0.35% copper, flash-smelting
declined to 8.4 Gg (US Geological Survey, 1998). slag contains more than 1%. When metallurgists
design flash smelters, they include a slag cleaning
2.3. Smelting process to recover copper and mitigate environ-
mental problems with the disposal of slag. The
The smelting process chemically separates the slag is cleaned either by re-melting it in an electric
copper from the iron and sulfur in copper-bearing furnace to recover more matte, or by milling and
minerals. Matte smelting has been the primary flotation (George et al., 1999; Rosenqvist, 1983).
technique for making metal from copper concen-
The blister copper made by pneumatic convert-
trate throughout the 20th century. The process is
ers contains about 98% Cu, together with all the
based on the principle that at high temperature
precious metals that were in the ore. The blister
sulfur has a higher affinity for copper than for
copper is sent to refineries that are usually (but
iron while oxygen has a higher affinity for iron
than for copper. When heated to 1200– 1300 °C, not always) located near smelters for further
the iron, sulfur, and copper in the concentrate processing.
produced by milling separate into slag (of approx- Early in the 20th century smelter slag typically
imate composition 2FeO SiO2) and matte (primar- contained about 0.35% copper, and was discarded
ily Cu2S). The liquid matte from the smelting directly from the furnaces to nearby dumps. Be-
furnace is transferred to a pneumatic converter cause of the adoption of flash smelting, which
and blown with air (or air enriched with oxygen) reduced energy consumption but increased copper
to convert the Cu2S to copper metal (‘blister concentration in slag, the copper content of dis-
copper’) and SO2 gas. carded slag was generally greater by the end of
From 1900 until the 1970s nearly all smelters the century than at the beginning (Fig. 4). For
used reverberatory furnaces to make matte and example, at smelters in Chile the slag from the
Pierce –Smith pneumatic converters to transform electric-furnace cleaning processes ranges from 0.8
the matte to blister copper (Hayward, 1952). This
equipment is still in use at some smelters where
capital for modernization has not been available
and environmental regulations have remained lax.
Roasted (or, today, dried) concentrate is charged
into the reverberatory furnace, which is usually
fired with oil or gas fuel. (Slag from the Piere–
Smith converters may also be charged into the
reverberatory furnace to recover its copper con-
tent.) Liquid matte and slag are tapped from the
reverberatory furnace. The matte is transferred to
Pierce –Smith converters to be blown, forming
impure (blister) copper. The SO2 gas released by
the furnaces can be recovered in a sulfuric acid
plant, an approach increasingly common in more
developed countries. If not so recovered, the gas is
vented through a tall stack into the atmosphere,
thereby contributing to the well-known acid rain
problem. Slag is usually dumped near the smelter Fig. 4. The copper content of smelting slag and the ratio of
site (Hayward, 1952). slag to metal made in smelting. The data are described by
Separation of matte from slag is not as efficient Gordon, 2002.
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
to 3% copper. The overall loss rate to slag was
3.1% of the copper made, virtually the same as the
losses in the traditional practice in use at mid-cen-
tury (Demetrio et al., 2000).
The ratio of slag discarded to the amount of
metal made depends on the copper content of the
concentrate. This ratio averages about 2.0, and
has changed little through the 20th century.
2.4. Sol6ent extraction-electrowinning
An alternative to the smelting of milling
product is ‘electrowinning’, a process that extracts
metal from electrolyte. In the original 1915 pro-
cess, copper-bearing ores were leached with dilute
sulfuric acid to produce the electrolyte from
which the metal was precipitated. The copper
made in this way contained lead carried over from
the anodes in the electrolytic cells.
The introduction of solvent extraction, first
used at the Bluebird mine in Arizona in 1968,
greatly increased the extraction efficiency of elec-
trowinning. After leaching with dilute acid, an
organic solvent (the ‘extractant’) is added to selec-
tively remove the copper. High-quality metal can
then be made from the resulting high-purity elec-
trolyte. This process (usually designated ‘SXEW’)
was adopted at mines in Arizona, Chile, and
Africa in the 1970s, and was significantly im-
proved with new extractants in the 1980s (Tilton
and Landsberg, 1999). However, because solvent
extraction-electrowinning (SXEW) requires ten
times as much electrical energy as classical elec-
trolytic refining, and because established solvent
extraction techniques do not work well on copper
sulfide ores, electrowinning techniques have re-
mained complementary to smelting.
Today about 15% of the world copper produc-
tion is from SXEW of copper oxide ores (Young
et al., 1999). In the US, where ore grades are
lower than in most other producing countries and
the principal mines are in the arid southwest, the
SXEW process offers copper producers a compet-
itive advantage (McKiney and Graves, 1977; US
Geological Survey, 1998). Metallurgists expect to
make more use of leaching techniques in the
future because as ore grades become lower it is
more difficult to meet the smelter requirement of
15
high-grade concentrate and high recovery with
established milling methods (N. Arbiter, private
communication, 2000). Additionally, a small
amount of copper is now extracted by leaching
ore bodies in the ground.
Data for plants around the world responding to
a 1998 survey (Jenkins et al., 1999) show that in
producing 855 Gg of electrowon copper, 3.5 Gg
of copper was not dissolved by the leach, making
the loss rate to tailings 0.41%. The weighted aver-
age loss rate to all tailings in the 1990–1999
decade is about 0.14%.
2.5. Refining
Copper sufficiently pure to meet the require-
ments of contemporary markets is made by a
two-stage process. First, blister copper is fire-
refined to remove the oxygen and sulfur that
would otherwise cause rough anode surfaces. The
slag from a fire-refining furnace may contain 20–
25% copper. Milling the slag followed by froth
flotation can recover 80% of more of this copper;
and leaching the resulting tailings can recover
another 10% (Giray et al., 1996). However, since
the amount of slag produced in fire refining is
small compared to that produced in smelting, it
can be neglected in a mass balance computation.
In the second stage of the process, the anode
copper is electrolytically refined to achieve the
required purity and to recover co-occurring pre-
cious metals. Electrolytic refining generates cop-
per cathodes (the desired product, known as
‘cathode copper’), spent electrolyte, and anode
mud (also known as slimes), the material that
remains after the anodes are dissolved. Anode
mud contains lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium, tel-
lurium, and the precious metals that were present
in the blister copper, and may be processed by
roasting and leaching to recover these by-product
metals (Hayward, 1952). At the Kennecott Utah
refinery, 9.7 kg of mud is formed for each Mg of
anode dissolved. An analysis of this mud is shown
in Table 2 (Dutrizac et al., 1999).
Mine waste stays at the mine site. Mill tailings
in ponds remain at the mill site. Some coarser
tailings may be used as aggregate near mill sites.
Most smelter slag is dumped at the smelter site.
16 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26

Table 2 the metal flows become highly complex and statis-

Analysis (%) of anode mud at the Kennecott Utah refinery
Cu Ag Au Se Te As Sb Bi Fe Ni
20 5 0.5 5 1 5 1 3 0.25 0.05
Although uses have been found for some of it,
most remains where it was dumped.
2.6. Fabrication, use, and in-use losses
Fabricators convert cathode copper into semi-
finished products such as shapes and ingots
(known as ‘semis’), which they ship to manufac-
turers. Metal losses in fabrication and manufac-
turing become ‘prompt’ scrap that is quickly
recycled, mostly internally. If impurities have been
introduced, or the metal is not fully separated
from other materials, it will be returned to metal
refiners. Brass and other alloys tend to be recycled
in alloy form rather than being reduced to the
individual alloying metals. Overall, net losses to
waste repositories from fabricators and manufac-
turers are generally regarded as negligible.
At the stages following the production of semis,
tics are sparse. Consider the flow diagram for
copper shown in Fig. 5. Few of the semis are
ready for use as such; rather, they more typically
travel to first-stage manufacturers, who make
metal rods, wire, and castings, and then to com-
ponent manufacturers who produce such things as
motors, valves, and insulated cables. The compo-
nents in turn are incorporated by final-stage
manufacturers into a variety of finished prod-
ucts—automobiles, commercial buildings, resi-
dential housing, and so forth.
The various agencies that gather information
on the use of copper do not have a uniform set of
categories for their data. Some agencies employ
categories that include both specific products
(such as electric motors) and particular forms
(such as wire). How they allocate copper between
such categories is usually not clearly stated. The
use categories that offer the best basis for defining
the factors needed in a copper cycle analysis
appear to be the seventeen classes of copper-con-
taining products made in 1990 in the US, Western
Europe, and Japan, as defined by the Market
Analysis Company of Birmingham, England

Fig. 5. An illustration of the transformation of copper from pure metal fabrication flows through component manufacture
(intermediate products) to a selection of final products. I and E indicates import and export flows.
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26 17

Table 3
Principal uses of copper, 1990

c Category Use (%) RT (years) S/W

1 Building wire 14 45 50/50

2 Tube 12 60 45/55
3 Alloy rod 11 20 10/90
4 Magnet wire 9 15 50/50
5 Telecommunication wire 8 50 25/75
6 Power cable 8 40 60/40
7 Copper sheet and strip 8 50 60/40
8 Alloy sheet and strip 7 25 20/80
9 Casting alloys 6 30 50/50
10 Motor vehicle wire 4 10 80/20
11 Appliance wire 4 20 50/50
12 Bare wire 3 10 0/100
13 Copper rod 2 40 60/40
14 Alloy tube 2 35 95/5
15 Wire (other) 1 5 0/100
16 Alloy wire 1 5 5/95
17 Chemical and powder B1 1 5/95

(Joseph, 1999). These uses, shown in Table 3,
account for about 79% of the world-wide con-
sumption of copper. They are useful guides to the
relative use magnitudes, but it is obvious that
these data will differ somewhat for different
epochs or stages of technological development.
Table 3 also shows our estimates of the residence
time (RT) of copper in each use, and of the
distribution between scrap and waste at the end of
use (S/W), based on extensive discussions with
manufacturers, contractors, and scrap dealers.
The metal contents of principal uses are not, of
course, uniform across all varieties of a single use.
In the case of automobiles, for example, large
vehicles that contain more small motors and more
electrical wiring will have higher copper content
than small, inexpensive vehicles. In addition, cop-
per content per vehicle has increased over time as
computerization and automation has increased
(Keoleian et al., 1997). In the case of housing,
copper content per residence increases with
affluence and societal technology development, as
plumbing, wiring, and appliances are added or
upgraded. It is clearly necessary to take this diver-
sity, based in part on the stage of technological
development and in part on cultural norms, into
account when estimating metal stocks in usage
repositories.
Losses to the environment occur during some
types of copper use. The most complete attempt
to estimate loss rates is that of Lander and Linde-
ström (1999) for Sweden. They evaluated emis-
sions from vehicle brake linings (a typical brake
pad is 25 –50% brass powder by weight), chemical
treatments, paints, water pipes, copper roofs, and
a variety of potentially minor sources (Table 4).
The conclusion was that about half of the in-use
dissipative losses of copper was attributable to
brake pad wear, at a rate estimated at 1–2 mg
Cu/km. Since the number of vehicles in a region
and the average vehicle miles traveled are statis-
tics that are generally available, the bulk of the
in-use copper losses can be straightforwardly
derived. Other significant dissipative copper
Table 4
Sources of dissipation of in-use copper to the environment
Source Percentage
Road traffic (brake linings, tires, road 56
surfaces)
Paints, impregnating agents 20
Waste dumps, landfills 14
Agricultural systems 6
Building corrosion 4
Adapted from Lander and Lindeström (1999).
18 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
sources include anti-fouling paints for ships, waste
dumps, and wood preservatives; the loss rates
from these sources are quite difficult to estimate
with any accuracy.
3. Copper imports and exports
Data for copper imports and exports are widely
reported, and are divided into several categories
including copper ore, refined copper, copper wire,
insulated wire, brass, and various categories of
products. The level of detail available differs
markedly from country to country. It is conve-
nient to group the data into three categories:
processed copper, semi-production copper, and
final products.
3.1. Rates of import and export of processed
copper
Processed copper can be divided into three
stages: mine production, smelter production and
refinery production. The related products are cop-
per concentrate, blister copper, and refined cop-
per. Import and export data for these processed
products are generally available on a country
basis. Comprehensive data sources include Inter-
national Copper Study Group (1999) and World
Bureau of Metal Statistics (2000).
3.2. Rates of import and export of
semi-production copper
The International Trade Statistics Yearbook
(United Nations, 1998) can be utilized as a com-
prehensive data source for semi-production cop-
per. This reference provides information on
imports and exports of a very large number of
commodities for every country around the world.
The results of trade are described by both quan-
tity and price. Commodities are classified by Stan-
dard Industrial Trade Classification (SITC) code
(United Nations, 1981).
The designation for semi-production copper is
SITC c 682.2, ‘copper and copper alloy worked’.
SITC c 682.2 consists of
c 682.21: Bars, rods, angle, shapes and sec-
tions, wrought of copper; copper wire
c 682.22: Plates, sheets and strip, wrought of
copper
c 682.23: Copper foil, of a thickness not ex-
ceeding 0.15mm
c 682.24: Copper powders and flakes
c 682.25: Tubes and pipes and blanks of cop-
per; hollow bars of copper
c 682.26: Tubes and fittings
Most of these items contain pure copper, while
copper alloy products are about 60–70% copper
by weight. Given typical ratios of copper and
copper alloy products in manufacture of 3/1, mul-
tiplying the weight figures given for SIC c 682.2
by 0.93 gives a good estimate of copper content.
It should be noted that total quantities of im-
port and export copper for countries in a given
geographical region do not represent the total
import and export of copper to and from the
region as a whole because trades within the region
are included in the national data. However, the
difference between the total quantity of import
and export flows for a region accurately reflects
the accumulation or depletion of regional copper
stocks.
3.3. Rates of import and export of
copper-containing products
Copper is also contained in finished products
that are imported or exported. The International
Trade Statistics Yearbook (United Nations, 1998)
does not provide data on some items that would
be of interest, such as plumbing supplies, but does
give useful information in three categories: insu-
lated wire, vehicles, and ships and boats. SITC
definitions of these commodities are as follows:
Insulated wire c 773.1: Insulated (including
enameled or anodized) electric wire, cable, bars,
strip and the like (including co-axial cable),
whether or not fitted with connectors.
Vehicles:
– c 781: Passenger motor cars (other than
public-service type vehicles), including vehi-
cles designed for the transport of both pas-
sengers, not more than nine persons, and
goods.
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
Table 5
Copper content of insulated wire
Weight (g)
Copper wire 18.42
Insulation 12.15
Total 30.57
– c 782: Motor vehicles for the transport of
goods or materials and special purpose mo-
tor vehicles.
– c 783: Public-service type passenger motor
vehicles and road tractors for semi-trailers.
– c 793: ships, boats (including hovercraft)
and floating structures.
The copper content of a typical insulated wire
sample was determined by measurement to be
about 60% (Table 5). Table 6 shows data for the
copper content of SITC c781: passenger motor
cars (Keoleian et al., 1997). The total weight of an
automobile and its copper are listed, and the
average copper content in three concurrent years
is calculated to be 1.44%. The copper content for
larger vehicles: c 782: motor vehicles for trans-
port of goods, c783: roads tractors and motor
buses, and c 793: ships and boats, is estimated at
1.0, 1.0, and 0.5%, respectively (Copper Develop-
ment Association, 1998– 1999). The copper con-
tent of trucks and buses is relatively low
compared to passenger vehicles because the in-
crease of the total weight of trucks and buses is
mostly due to the increase in size of the frames
and the engines, not in the content of wire or
brass.
Table 6
Copper content of automobiles
1990
Total weight (kg) 1316
Cu (kg)a 21
Cu (%)a 1.60
a
These figures are for the sum of pure copper and copper in brass alloy.
19
4. End of life flows for copper
Weight (%) Flows of materials from post-industrial or post-
consumer use are reused, recycled, landfilled, or
60.3 lost to the environment. Much of this material
39.7 clearly has potential value, and does not meet the
100.0
definition of waste: ‘matter or materials rejected
as useless and fit only to be thrown away’ (Gove,
1993). An alternative that has been suggested
(Tellus Institute, 1992; Duemling, 2001) is ‘dis-
cards’ (‘material got rid of as no longer useful,
valuable, or pleasurable’). However, we recognize
the existence of long-established terms such as
waste management and municipal solid waste
(MSW), embodied in regulations and in the re-
search literature, and it is clear that renaming
these terms would only cause confusion (e.g. Eu-
ropean Environmental Bureau, 2001) despite be-
ing more accurate in a definitional sense. Our
solution is to retain those terms where we refer to
specific types of discards, although we sometimes
refer to discards or discard streams when speaking
more generically.
4.1. Recycling of copper
The recycling of copper is as old as the usage of
the metal itself. Depending on the quality of the
recycled material, the blending of primary and
secondary substance flows takes place at different
production stages. The refined copper from recy-
cling sources is of the same quality as new metal.
Scrap is classified as prompt scrap (manufactur-
ing scrap), which is generated during the fabrica-
tion of copper products, and old scrap, which is
generated from products exiting the use phase.
These differ greatly in their quality. Because of its
high purity, most of the prompt scrap can be
1992 1994 Average
1425 1441 1395
20 19 20
1.40 1.32 1.44
20 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
directly re-melted, while a good deal of old scrap
has to return to the refinery and smelter stage
(International Copper Study Group, 1999). Old
and prompt alloy scrap such as brass and bronze
is mostly re-melted within its own alloy group. In
that case, alloying metals such as zinc and tin do
not have to be separated from copper.
Most of the valuable copper in prompt scrap is
recycled. Only residues whose recycling would be
economically unjustified are discarded. About
36% of the copper in old scrap comes from pure
copper products, and about 64% from alloy prod-
ucts, based on information on zinc recycling from
the International Zinc Association (2000). Nearly
100% of copper-bearing alloys are returned to the
semi-product stage, not only because of economic
benefits but also because of environmental regula-
tions limiting emission of heavy metals in
refineries.
4.2. Loss of copper in post-consumer waste
Information on the elemental composition of
wastes is scarce because its determination usually
is difficult, time consuming, and expensive as a
consequence of heterogeneity. Generally, there are
three methods that can be used to determine the
composition: (1) Collection of statistical informa-
tion on consumer goods and their lifetimes to
permit calculations of eventual post-consumer dis-
card flows. This approach is mainly used to deter-
mine amount and composition of MSW in the US
(Franklin Associates, 1997); (2) Sorting waste
samples. This can be done manually by a group of
researchers or mechanically by a separation facil-
ity such as a construction waste sorting plant
(Maystre and Viret, 1995; Schachermayer et al.,
2000); (3) Analyzing the residues of a homogeniz-
ing facility such as a MSW incinerator (Brunner
and Mönch, 1986; Morf and Brunner, 1998;
Belevi and Mönch, 2000; Morf et al., 2000). The
last method is the only one deriving information
directly at the elemental level (e.g. percent Cu in
MSW). The first two approaches usually provide
information on the fraction of a category in the
discard stream, such as percent paper, plastics,
wood, metals, miscellaneous, and so on. The typi-
cal chemical composition of most of these cate-
gories is generally available from literature and
the composition of the total flow stream can be
approximately calculated from this information.
Quantifying copper in post-industrial and post-
consumer discards and in the resulting mass flows
requires consideration of a number of discard
flows. These could be defined and monitored in a
variety of ways, but data are customarily avail-
able for flows whose origins are defined by gov-
ernment regulations. For the developed world,
national-level statistics for discard flows generally
include the following groups (the principal
sources of copper in the groups are given where
helpful):
“ MSW (daily household and commercial
waste)—metals and treated wood
“ Construction and demolition waste— pipes,
wire, sheets
“ Waste from electrical and electronic equip-
ment— electrical wire, boards, electronic
circuits
“ End-of-life vehicles (passenger cars, buses,
trucks)— radiators, cables, circuit boards
“ Sewage sludge (solid residues from wastewater
treatment)
“ Hazardous waste (HW)— sludge, chemical and
electrolysis residues, batteries
“ Industrial wastes (IW)—metals and treated
wood, composition generally unknown.
For each of these groups, collection and separa-
tion efficiencies must be specified, as must the
technical properties of landfills and incineration
plants (Bertram et al., 2002). These data must
generally be established independently for each
geographical region, both because the proportions
vary and because the data categorization may
differ.
Losses to the environment from these waste
groups can be approximated by judicious use of
representative data. In principle, the emissions of
incinerators and landfills can be estimated with
sufficient accuracy based on knowledge about
technology and climate. The rough partitioning of
copper in a grate-type furnace is quite well known
(Brunner and Mönch, 1986; Morf and Brunner,
1998; Belevi and Mönch, 2000; Morf et al., 2000)
and the composition of solid residues (bottom and
fly ashes) can be determined. There are also ways
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26 21

to assess emissions via the stack as long as actual Table 7

particulate emissions and filter technology are Principal developed country proxy indicators of copper, 1990s
epoch
known. If the flue gas treatment is based on a wet
scrubber system resulting in wastewater, these Proxy Typical copper Reference
emissions can also be roughly quantified content (kg)
(Schachermayer et al., 1995; Morf et al., 1997;
Achternbosch and Richers, 1999). For landfills Automobile 20 Table 6
Building, 200 Copper Development
not employing leachate containment, collection, residential Association
and treatment, the influence of climate on (1998–1999)
leachate generation is a consideration, as is the Building, a

surface design (permeability, porosity, capacity, commercial

b
re-cultivation). Data for concentrations of copper Building,
industrial
in leachate from a MSW landfill, emissions from Industrial b

MSW incinerators via wastewater, and emissions machinery

from incineration are presented and discussed in Per capita 4.0 Munie (2001)
Bertram et al. (2002). telecom
Per capita 4.3 Stillinger (2001)
electricity

5. Characterizing in-use stocks a

Stocks in reservoirs result from more material
entering a reservoir over time than leaving. Stocks
can be determined in either of two ways: by
measuring input and output flows over time and
computing the difference, or by measuring reser-
voir contents directly. If the reservoir contents are
relatively uniform from place to place and a con-
venient measurement technique is available, the
determination is straightforward, as with atmo-
spheric carbon dioxide. No such situation holds
with respect to in-use copper, however, which is
distributed inhomogeneously over a host of prod-
ucts for which statistics are generally unavailable.
Rather than counting copper atoms, therefore, we
must count proxy indicators of copper content
instead.
How do we determine the appropriate proxy
indicators? As suggested by Fig. 5, the practical
approach is not to evaluate wire or valves, but
rather such repositories as buildings. We set a
goal of identifying a small number of uses such
that E 80% of the metal stock is captured. Table
3 indicates the initial products into which copper
is formed. A few iterations of possibilities for final
proxies produces the list of seven principal uses
shown in Table 7. A few remarks are appropriate:
“ Good records of vehicle abundance are gener-
ally available; at worst, country-level statistics
Highly building-dependent.
b
Highly sector-dependent.
can be related to population density, probably
with an adjustment for per-capita wealth.
“ Residential housing records are generally avail-
able, and variations in housing affluence (and
thus metal content) are large but addressable.
“ Commercial and industrial building data may
be difficult to acquire in some parts of the
world. In these cases, one can perhaps relate
some combination of population density and
affluence to the spatial density of these
buildings.
“ Industrial machinery and its copper contents
will vary widely with industrial sector. For
non-industrial regions, this difficulty is avoided
altogether; for industrial regions, it may be
necessary to treat several major industrial sec-
tors individually to achieve accurate results.
In-use stocks are then estimated by arriving at
suitable average copper contents for each of the
proxy indicators, multiplying these factors by the
quantity of proxy indicators within the region of
interest, and summing the results. Independent
validation may be available if input and output
flows into the reservoir of interest can be tracked
over a period of time large with respect to the
average in-use lifetimes.
22 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26

6. Temporally-resolved cycles Table 8

An illustration of stock buildup and decline for copper build-
ing wire of average lifetime 45 years, age distribution as in Fig.
Thus far, this discussion has centered on cur- 6(a), the addition of 50 units per year during the use period,
rent-epoch flows of materials. These flows result and use that ends after 55 years
in changes of reservoir stocks over time unless
inputs and outputs to the various reservoirs are in Year Added as stock Coming out of Net stock
stock
balance (Kleijn et al., 2000). If changes in reser-
voir contents are integrated, they provide esti- 0–5 50 0 50
mates of the total stock as well as an age 6–10 50 0 100
distribution for metal in service. On average, any 11–15 50 0 150
16–20 50 0 200
metal older than the average service lifetime in a
21–25 50 0 250
particular use will become available for re-use, 26–30 50 0 300
and recycling may depend on the physical form of 31–35 50 0 350
the metal (whether pure or alloyed, for example). 36–40 50 8 392
Consider the use of copper in building wire, for 41–45 50 25 417
46–50 50 42 425
which we estimate an average use lifetime of 45 51–55 50 50 425
years (Table 3). Assume that the range of service 56–60 0 50 375
lifetimes is from 35 to 55 years, with a distribution 61–65 0 50 325
as shown in Fig. 6(a). If within a given geograph- 66–70 0 50 275
… … … …
ical region of analysis 50 units of copper are
added for a period of 55 years, the stock at-
tributable to those inputs is computed as shown in to become available for reuse or recycling at 35
Table 8. Building wire copper from stock put in years. The stock in the in-service reservoir reaches
place at the start of the period of analysis begins steady state after 45 years, at which time the age
distribution of the stock is as shown in Fig. 6(b).
The stock leaving service was manufactured by
technology at least 35 years old; keeping track of
the age distribution of this material will provide
perspective on approaches to reuse. After the
copper building wire becomes obsolete, the stock
gradually declines and disappears 55 years after
the last installation.
If this process is repeated for each of the princi-
pal uses, the result is an overall copper availability
rate, as well as a dynamic cycle that treats reser-
voir stocks and inter-reservoir flows at any epoch
within the time limits of the cycle analysis.

7. Spatially-resolved stocks and flows

We have mentioned above that data potentially

Fig. 6. (a) An assumed distribution of service lifetimes for
copper building wire, (b) A hypothetical age distribution of
copper building wire 60 years after the start of use.
useful for characterizing copper cycles is available
largely on a national basis, permitting aggregation
upward to continental or global scales. For many
uses, however, information spatially resolved to
scales smaller than a typical urban region is desir-
 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
able. Examples include the evaluation of stocks to
permit recycling rates or the evaluation of flows to
predict environmental impacts.
Moving from larger scales to smaller is fre-
quently accomplished by combining national or
regional stock or flow information with geograph-
ical information systems (GIS) databases. To
characterize the spatial distribution of copper
stock in residential housing, for example, a GIS
database on residential housing is combined with
the appropriate information on proxy copper con-
tent from Table 8. The result is a spatially re-
solved picture of the stock of copper in that type
of use or uses. If a similar procedure is followed
with other proxy types, and the results summed, a
composite spatial distribution of the stock con-
tained in the larger-scale reservoir is derived.
Spatially distributed flows are derived in a simi-
lar manner, since they are, in most cases, related
to the magnitude of stocks. For example, the
spatial distribution of the in-use loss of copper
from automobile brake-pad wear is obviously re-
lated to the location of major highways and their
traffic density. GIS databases for highway loca-
tion and traffic information are common. When
combined with typical loss rates from brake-pad
wear (Lander and Lindeström, 1999), the result is
spatial information on a specific in-use loss of
copper to the environment.
The reliability of these approaches is obviously
dependent on the precision of the GIS data and
the accuracy of the average proxy copper content
and loss rate. These data can be problematic, and
so require careful selection and validation.
8. Data quality and data utility
The data useful for characterizing cycles of
materials used in our technological society are
highly variable in quality and level of detail. In
general, data for the early steps of the life cycle of
a material (extraction, separation, and purifica-
tion) is widely available and of good quality,
largely because it is important to global financial
markets and is well categorized and tracked by
financial consulting organizations. The manufac-
turing stage, at which a material is widely dis-
23
tributed and assembled into a spectrum of
products, is much less well characterized in the
public literature, but typical mixes of products
tend to be available, often in a geographically
specific manner. The losses to the environment
and recycling at end of life are typically poorly
known.
Early life stage (extraction, processing, fabrica-
tion) information is relatively easy to acquire
from public sources. This information is typically
available to three significant digits, ample accu-
racy for all cycle development purposes. For ma-
terials use information, it is necessary to rely on a
mix of information from public sources and in-
dustrial collaborators. This information is at the
same level of accuracy as the early life stage data
so far as the more developed countries are con-
cerned (Copper Development Association, 1999,
for example), but no better than 9 50% for the
developing countries. For waste management and
loss information, one can draw on the recycling
literature and environmental and epidemiological
literature for representative information, and as-
sessors should expect to generalize from this rep-
resentative information considerably. It is unlikely
that at this stage of data collection and distribu-
tion the accuracy of either use or waste manage-
ment data is as good as 9 25%, but our
judgement is that the flows (not necessarily the
subflows) are probably accurate to 9 50% or
better.
Information is highly variable in availability
and quality from one geographical region to an-
other. The most consistent data tend to be at the
country level; data heterogeneity arises in scaling
up (to continental or global levels) or scaling
down (to city or watershed levels, for example).
When scaling up, it may be most apposite to be
content with data representing a high percentage
of a given flow, but not necessarily all of it. One
might choose to work with consistent, well-vali-
dated data for 80–90% of total estimated flow
rather than attempt to acquire poorly character-
ized data to capture inaccurately a higher flow
percentage. When scaling down, the challenge is
to accurately subdivide national data so as to
appropriately treat a specific region. Intracountry
flows are seldom monitored, so proxy information
24 T.E. Graedel et al. / Ecological Economics 42 (2002) 9–26
(amount of copper in a typical residence, number
of new housing starts, average income, etc.) is
likely to be crucial to estimating smaller scale
cycle information.
Unlike some natural cycles, it is clear that the
copper cycle is not in steady state. This makes it
difficult to quantify small copper flows (reuse of
plumbing pipe, loss to corrosion, etc.) by the
mathematics of differences. The same limitation
holds for studies of flows by input/output analysis
(e.g. Chapman and Roberts, 1983). By not using
classical I/O approaches, which are denominated
in monetary units rather than material ones, we
avoid the complexities of varying monetary rates
and differing industrial sector classifications.
Overall, our judgement is that data complete-
ness and accuracy are sufficient for what we term
initial characterization on continental and global
scales, i.e. the cycles can be expected to be repre-
sentative to perhaps one significant digit (e.g.
rates of recycling can be specified with reasonable
confidence as 20%, but with much less confidence
to 22%.) On country and smaller scales, cycle
precision is highly individualistic, with some enti-
ties providing data at the detailed e6aluation level
of precision, others perhaps not reaching the ini-
tial characterization level.
A cycle good to 9 50% should be adequate to
guide engineering decision-making and resource
and policy perspectives so far as the major materi-
als flows are concerned. It is less satisfactory as a
guide for human health and environmental assess-
ments, since those tend to relate to minor mass
flows that occur as inputs to specific human or
natural ecosystems. In such cases, copper cycles at
high spatial resolution are needed to assess dissi-
pative losses (e.g. Lander and Lindeström, 1999;
Bergbäck et al., 2001), and are likely to be possi-
ble only with considerable effort and only for the
more developed countries.
9. Summary
We have described in this paper the availability
and use of data for the flows of copper within the
technological society, and methods for analyzing
and assembling these data into copper cycles. In a
number of cases, the challenge is not one of
measurement, but of gathering information from
a wide variety of heterogeneous sources. In other
cases, data are very fragmentary and it is neces-
sary to proceed on the basis of small amounts of
what appear to be representative information. As
a consequence, we do not claim that the techno-
logical copper cycles that can be assembled with
information currently available will be highly ac-
curate. Nonetheless, we conclude that information
is sufficiently available to permit quantitative cy-
cles to be developed at national, continental, and
global scales. The data accuracy is at the ‘initial
characterization’ level when considered overall.
The results that can be achieved have been
demonstrated by constructing a contemporary
copper cycle for Europe (Spatari, et al., 2002).
Refinement of the quantitative information can be
expected as comprehensive material flow informa-
tion becomes integrated into national data sets in
the future (Matthews et al., 2000). The utility of
the resulting cycles as information frameworks for
resource management, environmental science, and
policy analysis is likely to be substantial, as the
cycles will provide hitherto unavailable perspec-
tive on the approximate level of stocks in various
reservoirs, the flows among them, and the poten-
tial ways in which stocks and flows might be
modified should that prove desirable.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the US National
Science Foundation under grant BES-9818788. H.
Rechberger thanks the Max Kade Foundation,
Inc. for post-doctoral support.
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