Earth's Copper Supply Inadequate For Development? 838
ScentCone writes "Pennies, pipes, untold miles of CAT5 - they tie up a lot of copper. Unlike abundant iron and aluminum, copper is relatively scarce. But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission, plumbing, and other uses central to a modern standard of living. Scientific American is providing a quick overview of the situation. They report the conclusion that there simply isn't enough available. Canada, Mexico and the US average 170kg of copper use per person, and the most generous estimates suggest that only 1.6 billion unused metric tons exist. More reclamation and use of fiber, wireless, and PVC helps - but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly wired/mechanized societies."
Indentured Childhood (Score:5, Interesting)
I also had to sit and cut the plastic off of foot after foot of copper wire with a utility knife and leather gloves so we could recycle the copper wire for cash.
At last, I can now put these valuable skills on my résumé! I just hope my career in technology doesn't come around full circle
Monster (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Monster (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, though, I don't understand the big panic. So copper prices rise as the easily minable deposits get exhausted - and? There are replacement materials. There's silver for when you need great conductivity (better than copper), and there's aluminum for when you don't (and you can tolerate metal fatigue). There are many other metals that could be used in between the two, and many of the metals that are common in the ground but are hard to refine show signs of significant price reduction in the future.
So the length of runs of wire that you can use become shorter. So it uses a little more power. So bandwidth capability decreases. Or, so people pay a higher price. Copper will never disappear; the shortage just means that people will have to turn to mining less rich/harder to refine deposits.
So what?
And who is to say that copper wire is going to continue to be in such demand? Optical fiber seems to be going into wider and wider use. More technology is turning to wireless communication. In short, I really don't see this as a huge issue. There have been shortages of various ores throughout all of recorded history. We'll cope just fine.
Re:Monster (Score:3, Funny)
Never mind.
Re:Monster (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Monster (Score:3, Funny)
Oh great! How long before they come to strip-mine my beach?
Re:Monster (Score:4, Informative)
They are Gold plated for marketing. a nickel plated connector is just as good as any gold plated connector with nearly the same corrosion resistance and certianly overall a better connector.
My switchcraft solid nickel connectors are of much higher quality than any gold connectors sold.
Gold connector = marketing to fool consumers.
Re:Monster (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Monster (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Monster (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Monster (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Monster (Score:4, Funny)
Off Topic (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Interesting)
Recycling of our old copper products is really the way to look here. Not only does it lessen the drain of our limited copper supply, which is good for everyone, but it lessens the impact on the environment of copper strip mining which releases unthinka
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:3, Funny)
I just had to learn to strip wire without cutting myself.
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:5, Funny)
we had to chew the insulation off, in the snow . . .
Re:Indentured Childhood (Score:4, Funny)
I had to eat the wire, go work in the field, and collect the deinsulated wire from the outhouse.
Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to horde pennies maybe.
Pennies must go! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody uses them.
They are dangerous to children when swallowed, due to the zinc (unlike all other US coins)
And let's face it, Lincoln already has his picture in enough places!
(Ok, done ranting now...)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Interesting)
While we're at it, get rid of the dollar bill. Most people don't realise this, but the government could save over $400 million per year by elliminating it. There's several reasons for this but the big one is that dollar bills have a short life span (about 13 months) and people would switch to dollar coins ($2 useage might increase a little but probably not much). Paper money
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:4, Informative)
One day I found a sign on the counter of check out explaining something called "swedish rounding". The explanation said something like they "round down prices ending in 1,2 to 0 and 6,7 to 5 and round up prices ending in 3,4 to 5 and 8,9 to 0." My head was spinning trying to figure out how that worked. I have since see the explanation more simply as 0,1,2 are rounded to zero, 3,4,5,6,7 are rounded to 5, and 8, 9 are rounded to 10.
from this blog: http://michaelandrews.blogspot.com/2005/07/swedis
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, there a
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, we have 10 roubles bill in Russia (about $0.3) and it has 3 years lifetime. Next bills are 50 roubles and 100 roubles and they are MUCH more durable than dollar bills. I usually carry money in my pocket (along with my keys and driving license) without wallet and it doesn't cause any problem.
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, it doesn't matter since the dollar coin has an average life span of 20 years. So even if they trippled the
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:5, Funny)
Noooo! They did that in Canada, and now I have to give the strippers either loonies [wikipedia.org] or toonies [wikipedia.org]! I wanna slip paper into those g-strings, dammit!
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way to make the dollar coin work in the U.S. is to do what Canada did -- after the "Loonie" (dollar coin) was introduced, the 1 dollar bill was retired. The dollar bills in circulation were removed as they aged and were no longer fit for circulation. After a few years the dollar bill was effectively gone from circulation.
Canada then did the same thing with the "twoonie" (2 dollar coin). As long as dollar bills are available, they will be used over dollar coins just because that is what people ar
Susan B's were rejected by people (Score:4, Interesting)
When the Sacajawea dollars were designed, they were made larger, a different color, and the edges were smoothed precisely to help avoid this confusion. This helped, some.
However, in the long run, would you rather have nine 3x6 folded sheets of paper in your pocket, or nine large coins? Most people prefer the weight and flexibility of paper.
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Informative)
They aren't.
They did. [usmint.gov]
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:5, Informative)
In Australia, we phased out our 1c and 2c coins about 15 years ago; I think it was mainly a cost-saving measure - and nobody wanted to deal with piddly small change. (The remaining coinage contains between 75% and 92% copper, depending on the denomination, so that fact the 1c and 2c coins were copper is coincidental.)
The $1 note was replaced with a $1 coin in 1984, and the $2 note was replaced by a coin in 1988. Again, I believe it was a cost-saving measure - the low denominations had a high turnover rate from wear (like the US $1 note), coins are much more durable. There were other spin-offs e.g. use in vending machines.
Similarly, the old paper notes were replaced with polymer ones from 1992 (though the first, a commemorative $10 note, was released in 1988 for the bicentennial.) Polymer lasts longer and is much harder to counterfeit. [rba.gov.au]
Re:Pennies must go! (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I see one of those shows on TV (or an article online) about how the US has added x or y security feature to the new $ bill, I wonder why they bother since the old bills are still legal tender so the counterfiters will just counterfit those. And, there will probobly be enough bills in circulation that it would be difficult to say "anytime you see an old bill, check carefully to be sure its not counterfit"
Re:Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:5, Informative)
Oddly enough, the composition of pennies did not change between 1962 and 1982. There should be no difference between a 1971 penny and a 1981 penny, in terms of copper content.
The US Mint made 7 different variations of the penny in 1982 (counting the various different mint marks), after which they made pennies exclusively out of copper plated zinc.
More info is posted here [usmint.gov] and here [coaleducation.org].
Uh-huh (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:4, Informative)
Ashtray outperforming 401k: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/nevalainen/neva
Copper is at $2.1373 / lb today, meaning:
100 pre-1982 pennies (95% copper, 3.11 grams of copper, ignore the zinc as it is a small amount) are worth $1.39
(1982 is when they switched to the 95% zinc we have today.)
now if only I had a machine to sort out the pre and post-'82 pennies...
Re:Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pennies are not copper anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
You used to occasionally see them in McDonalds, but that was a while (>10 years) ago.
When I was a kid we used to put pennies on the railroad tracks and wait for a freight
REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Informative)
To say that copper is scarce is not really accurate -- the price of copper has gone up but not in the way you'd expect if a needed item was about to run out. I blog [blogspot.com] (and publish a print newsletter) about gold -- I do about 90% of my research trying to find the manipulators in the gold market. One of the "worst" manipulators is the mining industry itself, but I believe hiding trade facts is very important for a free market. If copper was truly disappearing, you'd see the market react by the price hyperinflating, not just steadily growing. Mining companies spend 10-15 years just opening a mine. If they knew they were running out, they wouldn't sell it so cheaply.
I believe the steady growth in the price of copper is more of an effect of fiat currency inflation causing all consumer goods and salaries to go up (basically devaluing everyone's labor even if they feel they're earning more). When copper goes up 1000% in a week, there will be a problem. 1% fluctuations is nothing.
Just as I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years, I don't believe we'll be running out of copper. I study 5-10 mining reports a day and all I see is more and more oil, gold, carbon and copper being found. As we innovate and are able to drill deeper and deeper, we're finding that MOST of what geophysicists warned us about 10 years ago isn't true -- we keep finding more to consumer, not less. I think we will be able to say the same thing 10 years from now and 100 years from now -- we're amazed and what we're finding as we dig deeper.
All these "fear the scarcity" news reports on vital materials are bunk -- you'll know when there is a shortage when the price skyrockets (supply and demand is very hard to manipulate in the long run). And when the price skyrockets, it will give innovators reason to find new ways to recycle more efficiently, dig deeper or find other ways to provide the same service with a different product.
The day that copper is gone for good is the day that we take clay out of the ground and find a way to offer room temperature superconductivity. Serendipity doesn't end, and higher copper prices give innovators more reason to find new solutions to yesterday's problems. One of the reasons I formulated my anarcho-capitalist [blogspot.com] belief system is based on finding that supply and demand really does set prices in the long haul, even if government and industry tries to manipulate prices in the short run.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Interesting)
If god told GW to cut all the trees tomorrow the price of wood would drop to zero but that doesn't mean the supply of trees is increasing worldwide.
Economists don't measure the sustainibility or the global supply, they only measure the rate of extraction and processing. Yet another reason why economics is a junk science.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:4, Interesting)
"I study 5-10 mining reports a day and all I see is more and more oil"
I agree with you on Copper. However, I think you may be off on Oil. I have read that it's been 2 years since any new major Oil fields have been discovered. For the past 50 years we have found at least 1 new Oil field a year. The cost of Oil has also gone from $30 a barrel to $66 a barrel. I have also read that the north sea Oils production peaked 3 years ago and is on it's decline. We will never completely run out of Oil. however, we will run out of enough Oil in the next 75-100 years to make life interesting if there are no alternatives.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:4, Informative)
re: oil sands costs
They're profitable when regular oil is around $30/bbl - we're over $60 right now, and it's projected we'll stay at $50 or more for the foreseeable future. Oil sands are profitable _now_; just ask Alberta.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as I don't believe we're anywhere near to running out of oil in the next 1000 years,
That's a pretty unconventional view -- actually, a unique view -- in the minerals world.
One of the reasons I formulated my anarcho-capitalist belief system
Ahh
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Informative)
That's a pretty unconventional view -- actually, a unique view -- in the minerals world."
Actually, he is correct. We aren't going to run out of oil. There will be oil in the ground that isn't economical or technologically feasible to extract.
We are going to run out of plentiful and cheap oil (and $70 barrel is cheap). Which for all practical purposes means we are going to run out of oil.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, human ingenuity will allow us to keep finding oil but at some point it takes more energy to get it than it gives us back. At that point we will have run out of oil as far as it's use as a fuel is concerned.
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:REAL Scarcity would mean HUGE price increases (Score:5, Insightful)
If you worry about filtering your knowledge against all that has come before you and all that is going on right now, you will be paralyzed into inaction. There's just way too many people out there all working with essentially the same wetware for much unique thought to pop into existance. Outside of academia where novel thought is the currency of the profession, it's simply more practical to charge ahead with your own thoughts and claim them for what they are, yours. I'm perfectly willing to take it on faith that when someone says they thought something up on their own that they are bring truthful.
Anyone who has done any serious reading will know that eerie feeling of encountering someone else who has developed a similar line of thought as one of your own, especially when it comes from a source hundreds or even thousands of years old.
So what's my point? Not that you shouldn't point out the reference to Heinlein, just try not to be so condescending about it. As if it's somehow the person's fault they don't already know about someone else who has developed a similar or parallel idea. There's lots of ways of making a friendly connection to older material. If anything it's a bit of a compliment I think to mirror thought that has become recognized as important enough that people 50 years later still associate it with a particular person in history.
Purchasing power is king (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Recycling is weird (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is if you buy a bunch of bottles of some weirdo brand, they're a pain in the butt to get rid of later, because no local place will take them. At my parents house there is a flat of glass root beer bottles that have been sitting around for almost a decade, because we can't figure out where they should go.
(An
The red-headed stepchild of non-renewables: He. (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't partiuclarly aware that this was a consumable resource until recently, but it is. Every cubic foot of helium gas that's released up into the atmosphere is basically lost forever -- it's so light that it just keeps going up and up, and eventually escapes our atmosphere.
Although it's not as important to us as a civilization as copper, and will probably take longer to become scarce, it's not something that's partiularly easy to get. Right now we get most of our supply from the natural gas industry -- helium is present in natural gas but doesn't burn, and if not extracted from the gas prior to use just goes out the tailpipe. There are (or were) government-backed programs to extract and store the He prior to use of the natural gas, but I'm not sure if that's still going on.
We use an increasing amount of Helium in its liquid form as cooling, partiularly for MRI machines. I can only see this usage getting bigger in the future; plus, liquid He is one of the only ways to reliably get objects down to ultra-cold temperatures, which might become very important in the future. (Superconducting computers?) The point is that we really haven't exploited Helium very far, and yet we're 'burning' through it fairly quickly, along with the natural gas supply.
It's just another thing that when it's gone, it's gone. It may seem frivolous now, but when you consider the difficulty of synthesizing a hydrocarbon chain, it's not partiularly tough. Make me a mole of helium atoms cheaply on an industrial scale? Now that's difficult.
So... (Score:3, Funny)
It's not going to matter anyway... (Score:5, Insightful)
Past peak copper (Score:4, Funny)
Time for a tech revolution (Score:3, Funny)
Mr. President, we must not allow... (Score:5, Funny)
Asteroid Mining! (Score:2, Funny)
Not Enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me that at 170Kg a head, 1.6 billion tons is enough to support 9.6 billion people. At the standards to which we in North America have become accustomed. So, where exactly is the shortage?
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
"Multiply that by overall population estimates of 10 billion people by 2100 and the world will require 1.7 billion metric tons of copper by that date--more than even the most generous estimate of available resources."
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
And remember, we're moving away from a copper society, not towards it. With broadband technologies and cell phones these days, the need for copper as a medium for information transmission is quickly waning. A developing nation trying to modernize might very well skip
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
I find your faith in our civilization... disturbing. The Sun's got about 4.5 - 5 billion more years till red giant shenanigans. I have no doubt society as we know it will be wiped out one way or another long before then. But still, I'm sure humans will make a good run.
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not Enough? (Score:3, Informative)
Space Mining? (Score:4, Insightful)
More realistically, I imagine that we'll move to other materials. Data lines don't need to use copper, but they do so because it's common and inexpensive. If the price of copper goes up, you might see fiber optics come down in price.
Same with power transmission lines. There's nothing stopping them from using Aluminum if copper becomes too expensive.
My guess, however, is that more emphasis will be placed on recycling copper. The price will rise some, pushing out the uses where it isn't needed. The remaining uses will continue to use copper supplied heavily by the recycling centers.
During the Manhattan Project... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:During the Manhattan Project... (Score:3, Informative)
ahref=http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Researc
simple solution (Score:3, Funny)
oh wait...
Enough for 9.5 billion people! (Score:2)
A penny saved is copper earned (Score:5, Informative)
"The largest known Copper ore deposits in the world are in Chuquicamata in the Chilean Andes, and the largest deposit of native copper is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula."
This [dartmouth.edu] is an interesting article about Copper. Apparently Copper is also released as pollution during the mining and refining process, possibly more could be saved if there were more efficient ways of extracting and refining the metal.
One other solution is to go wireless.
Re:A penny saved is copper earned (Score:3, Informative)
Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.utah.com/attractions/kennecott.htm [utah.com]
they actually produce 15% of the countries copper annually. But I have been hearing that the mine is basically tapped (at least the current mine) And that they will be starting a new mine a little futher back in the Oquirr mountains in order the meet the needs of the country.
Interestingly enough, they also produce a significant portion of the countries Uranium, Iron, and other precious metals. But i can see how we could eventually run out of resources. Hence them being natural resources. Luckily, since copper is a natually occuring element, it should be more abundant at deeper sub-terrain.
Re:Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
Just use lead-lined clay, like the ancient Romans (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thought that sounded familiar.
ed
Mine the asteroids or junk piles? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mining the asteroids is currently prohibitively expensive, but costs will eventually go down. I'd like to see some legislation to encourage such endeavors, which might be the next profitable commercial activity after space tourism.
Of course, we could always wait for them to fall to the Earth [space.com], but that requires lots of patience.
Doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
Use gold (Score:3, Informative)
A friend here has been investing in gold for some time, maybe he is on to something.
BTW, pennies are not copper anymore. From the US mint:
The alloy remained 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc until 1982, when the composition was changed to 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper (copper-plated zinc).
Copper is very recyclable, and in demand. It pays anywhere between pennies to $1.50/pound or more to recycle it.
Now that electronics are disposable because of quick upgrades and poor reliability, they will be recycled more in the future. There is a bunch of copper and gold and other nice stuff in there.
Its a crime that the zinc industry lobbies congress with cash every time we try to get rid of the penny. Its useless. In fact all change is. What can you really buy for less than a buck? If its less than a buck, splurge and get two.
If I start my own restaurant, I will not take or receive change. Its heavy, and it would cost more of my employees time to count, sort, and organize the change than if they just threw it in the trash. Or maybe I could just throw it in the tip pool, and give it to them in cash later.
Silver (Score:3, Insightful)
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economics (Score:3, Informative)
Aluminum (Score:3, Interesting)
If copper becomes expensive, developing countries will just use aluminum. The biggest problem with aluminum wiring is joining it to copper; this is the only thing that really inhibited aluminum wiring in this country, where there was already a ton of copper wiring everywhere. Places starting from scratch won't have that problem so much. Long-distance transmission lines will likely be copper for a long time due to the lower resistance. (Gold, BTW, is a worse conductor than copper, and is quite comparable with aluminum. Silver is slightly better than copper, if you're willing to pay.) There will be more and more transmission lines being built with superconductors [supercables.com], though!
Of course, the incredible energy requirements of aluminum production yields its own set of headaches. But if we don't solve that problem, the wiring dilemma will be moot anyhow.
Re:Aluminum (Score:4, Informative)
>for a long time due to the lower resistance.
Transmission lines are already often made with aluminum.
The problem with aluminum for transmission lines isn't so much the conductivity, but the mechanical strength. Aluminum is paired up with steel or some composite to solve that issue.
Satue Of Liberty (Score:3, Insightful)
Statue of Liberty (Score:3, Funny)
(Dear NSA: I'm only joking)
Predictable Results (Score:3, Funny)
Power transmission isn't all copper (Score:3, Informative)
Most power lines use steel reinforced aluminum cable, and have since the 1950's. It's a lot cheaper and a lot lighter than copper. The drawback is that, at high voltages, the aluminum gets hot, hotter than the steel, and sags. There is a fair amount of research going on into better aluminum alloys to avoid the problem.
-h-
We have copper mines just sitting idle (Score:3, Interesting)
Supply and demand. Currently, the supply far exceeds the demand. When the demand grows, those mines will re-open, supplying the demand for copper as well as the small demand for gem covellite and native copper.
Don't sweat it, this is yet another phony panic.
The sad thing is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I tend to wonder if some day, perhaps sooner than we think, it will be profitable to mine these landfills (many currently golf courses and home sites!) for that "wasted" material, for recycling purposes. Furthermore, I think about the tons of organic material (yard and landscaping waste, mostly) which is in our landfills (and more going in every day) which could be reclaimed, recycled, and then fed into thermodepolymerization [google.com] plants tuned for the feedstock, allowing us to gain fuels and other useful materials from stuff that is just being thrown away.
Think about all the organic material from New Orleans which was simply bulldozed into landfills? Could that material have been run through a TDP process and used to offset, in whatever percentage, the fuel shortages caused by Katrina? Why do we throw this stuff away, when we can use it for other purposes?
Fortunately, most metals are recycled already, but there is still a lot of useful stuff in our landfills (including a lot of metals), just waiting for the day to be used again (unfortunately, in order to get at the stuff with any measure of safety, these landfills would have to be strip-mined)...
we've only been using copper wiring for 200 yrs! (Score:3)
"In fact, residents of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. required an average of 170 kilograms of copper per person. Multiply that by overall population estimates of 10 billion people by 2100 and the world will require 1.7 billion metric tons of copper by that date--more than even the most generous estimate of available resources. "
ok... you do realize civilization has been using copper wiring for less than 200 years correct? So why the "gloom and doom" scenario set 100 yrs in the future ? As they mentioned we've already got great alternatives like wireless, fiber and PVC, do they really think we're gonna need copper 100 yrs from now as much as we do now?
I predict that long before 2100 we find an alternative, remember 100 years is a very long time when it comes to technology, just look at planes, computers, plastics, glue, etc.
Also they're assuming the entire world will be at the level the average American is now by 2100. Let's not forget there's many people in foreign countries still without electricity or running water, things most Americans had over 100 years ago, so why assume that everyone on the planet will have them 100 years from now?
This has got to be the most absurd "sky is falling" scenario I've ever read, I wouldn't be surprised if it was written by recycling companies or copper lobbyist.
Steal it (Score:3, Insightful)
what puzzles me (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the semantic tricks pulled by the Science News story and perhaps by the original authors is to term consumption a "need". In other words, just because the world is consuming copper at unusually high rates due to its low cost, this consumption is "needed". My take is that once copper rises, the "need" will dissipate.
And that brings me to my final point. Why is this a problem? If copper becomes scarce then its price will rise and people will comsume less of it. My point here is that this problem is already solved. The economy will adjust for it naturally.
Re:I'd like to be the first (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pennies (Score:5, Interesting)
The composition of the penny was changed to use copper plate. I seem to recall that the feds outlawed melting of pennies as well but that was a long time ago.
Anyway, I agree that eliminating the penny is long overdue but the feds don't seem to want to make that embarrasing admission that inflation exists and money is becoming worthless. Back in the day when Nixon imposed the (ill-considered and ineffective) wage and price freeze it was in response to runaway inflation at ~3%. Nowdays we call that rate "controlled". Hell, during the reign of the great inflation-controlling Greenspan, the dollar lost about half of its purchasing power. Time to drop the charade.
481,253 Kilograms of Cu per year. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pennies are mostly Zinc now - only 2.5% Copper.
The US Mint makes 7.7 Billion pennies a year (2005) - so that still adds up to about 481,250 Kg of Cu, just for Pennies. (.025 * 2.5g /penny = 16 pennies to use 1 gram of Cu, 16,000 pennies per Kg)
So is over a million pounds of copper "a lot"? There are 300 Million people in the USA, so on a per-capita basis, copper usage is only about 25 cents worth, or about 1.6 grams per person.
So - 481,000
They already do... (Score:3, Informative)
Pre-1982 pennies are already worth more as scrap than as currency. (Post-1982 are mostly zinc).
It takes abou 145 pre-1982 pennies to get have a pound... at the current copper price of just over $2 pound, they appear to be worth more as scrap than as money, although I suspect logistical considerations would eat into any profit making scheme based on this fact.
Zinc is worth just under $1 pound, and it takes over 160 of the current pennies t