Copper is the hidden value in your home

You might think of old pots and pans or copper gutters. But did you know that copper is hidden all over your house? In the walls behind your wallpaper, under the floor, in every appliance you turn on. Most people have no idea how much copper they use every day. And yet, the average home contains about 195 kilograms of copper wire, worth roughly 1,300 euros as scrap. So that renovation or cleanup will yield more than you thought.

Your Home's Nervous System

Turn on the lights. Turn on the TV. Charge your phone. You use copper in each of these actions, because it forms the entire nervous system of your home. Kilometers of copper wire run through the walls of virtually every home, ensuring that electricity reaches your outlets safely.

Why copper, specifically? It is one of the best conductors of electricity in the world, second only to silver. This means that electricity flows through it efficiently without significant energy loss. In addition, copper has a high melting point, allowing it to withstand heavy loads safely. Even when copper oxidizes, it continues to conduct electricity, so connections do not require any special treatment.

That reliability is what makes copper wiring so valuable. It lasts for decades without requiring any maintenance. So when you renovate an old house and replace the electrical wiring, a huge amount of bare copper wire is often left over. That is the purest form of copper scrap and commands the highest price for copper at Krommenhoek Metals.

Water and Heat Through Copper Pipes

Turn on the faucet. That water flows through copper pipes before it reaches your glass. Modern homes have copper pipes that carry water from the water heater to the bathroom and kitchen, supply hot water to showers, and heat radiators. The average home contains about 150 pounds (approximately 69 kilograms) of copper water pipes, fittings, and faucets.

Heating systems also rely on copper. Whether you have a traditional boiler, a modern heat pump, or even solar collectors for hot water, the pipes that carry heat are made of copper because of its excellent thermal conductivity.

After a bathroom renovation or central heating system replacement, significant amounts of copper pipes are left over. Clean copper free of impurities (Category 1) fetches between 6.85 and 7.00 euros per kilo at Krommenhoek Metals.

Your kitchen is a copper museum

Open up your kitchen cabinets and take a look at your appliances. That microwave? It contains copper wiring and components. Your oven, toaster, electric kettle, and even the TV in the living room—they’re all full of copper in their circuits and wiring.

Large household appliances also contain significant amounts of copper. A washing machine contains about 4.4 kilograms of copper in its motor and wiring, a dryer about 2 kilograms, a refrigerator about 5 kilograms, and an air conditioner can contain as much as 52 kilograms of copper. So when these appliances break down, there’s a lot of value hidden inside them.

Your smartphone fits in your hand but contains valuable copper

That phone in your pocket? It’s full of copper. Every smartphone contains copper circuits, connectors, and wiring that enable data transmission and power supply. The circuits on the circuit board, the USB port, the charging cable—they’re all made of copper.

Computers contain even more. Printed circuit boards full of copper circuits, processors with copper connections, memory modules, and cooling systems with copper heat sinks that keep the processor cool. Without that copper cooling, your computer would overheat and shut down.

The future calls for even more copper

Now things are really getting interesting. Because copper is becoming even more important than it already is. The energy transition and electrification are driving an explosion in demand for this metal.

Electric cars use four times as much copper as gasoline-powered cars. A traditional car requires 23 kilograms of copper, a hybrid 40 kilograms, but a fully electric car contains as much as 83 kilograms of copper. Electric buses contain even more, ranging from 224 to 369 kilograms. All that copper is found in batteries, electric motors, wiring, and charging infrastructure.

Solar panels require approximately 5.5 metric tons of copper per megawatt of capacity. The metal is found in the wiring, the busbars that connect solar cells, and the inverters that convert direct current to alternating current. Wind turbines contain up to 4.7 metric tons of copper per three-megawatt turbine—used in cables, generator components, and systems that feed the generated energy into the grid.

Why Recycling Is the Solution

There’s no way we can meet that enormous demand with newly mined copper alone. That’s why recycling is essential. And here’s the great thing: copper is 100 percent recyclable without any loss of quality. A copper wire installed in a home 50 years ago is just as good as new copper after being recycled.

Recycling also saves 85 percent of the energy required to extract new copper from mines. That makes a huge difference in CO₂ emissions—for every metric ton of recycled copper, you save approximately 2.8 metric tons of CO₂. At a time when we want to accelerate the energy transition, that’s a significant advantage.

On average, Americans use 595 kilograms of copper over the course of their lives. All that copper is found in homes, appliances, vehicles, and electronics. When those products are replaced, the copper becomes available for reuse—but only if we actually turn it in.

From Old Copper to New Applications

What happens to the copper you turn in to Krommenhoek Metals? It literally gets a new lease on life. After collection, it goes to specialized smelters where it is melted down into new material. That recycled copper is then used in electric cars and their charging infrastructure, solar panels and wind turbines that generate clean energy, new homes and renovation projects, smartphones and computers, and medical equipment in hospitals.

So those old copper pipes from your bathroom could end up in a charging station for electric cars. The copper wire from your old washing machine might get a second life in a solar panel. In this way, every bit of collected copper contributes to a more sustainable future.

Your Contribution to the Circular Economy

Every piece of copper you recycle instead of throwing away makes a difference. It helps ensure the availability of this essential metal for future generations, saves enormous amounts of energy and reduces CO₂ emissions, and makes the energy transition possible by keeping enough copper available for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Krommenhoek Metals plays a crucial role in this circular economy. Through professional collection and processing, we ensure that valuable copper is not lost but is reused time and time again.