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Telco giant confident of recovering some 200,000 tonnes of copper from old legacy network over the next decade, reports claim
BT Group has received £105m as upfront prepayment for the sale of leftover copper cabling from its old network of broadband and phone lines to a recycling company, according to reports over the weekend.
The telco giant has inked a first of a kind forward agreement to sell copper granules created from surplus cables being replaced as part of its £15bn rollout of high-speed full-fibre broadband to 25 million homes, according to reports in The Guardian.
BT's investment in the rollout of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP lines across the UK by subsidiary Openreach is set to be followed by the extraction of the copper lines that used to underpin the telephone network. According to reports, the group is confident it will be able to recover in the region of 200,000 tonnes of copper from its old legacy network through the 2030s.
Openreach's rollout is forecast to reach 25 million UK homes by December 2026, rising to 30 million by the end of the decade. The "full fibre" transformation of the UK should also provide a £72bn boost to economic output in 2030, according to Openreach.
BT's most recent Annual Report stated that as part of modernising its network, the firm is continuing to recover old or end-of-life network equipment to reuse or recycle.
For example, it claimed to have recovered 3,300 tonnes of copper in the year to 31 March, and confirmed it had agreed a deal with a leading bank and global recycler EMR to support the extraction and recycling of copper cable from its network until 2028. More broadly, BT's report stated that it has reused 10,000 pieces of network equipment with the wider business.
"As we look to recover and reuse scarce resources like copper in line with our commitment to sustainability, we estimate that as we replace old copper networks with fibre, we'll be able to recover up to 200,000 tonnes of copper through the 2030s - in line with customer migrations," an Openreach spokesperson said.
Widely used in electrical equipment, data centres, and wiring for technologies deemed crucial to the green transition such as wind turbines, demand for copper is expected to soar in the coming decades. A 2022 study by S&P forecast copper demand will grow from 25 million metric tonnes to about 50 million by 2035.
Copper prices were reported to have risen by 151 per cent since 2019 by non-profit Material Focus earlier this year, while The Guardian estimates that at current market prices, 200,000 tonnes of copper could be worth about £1.5bn.
News of BT's surplus copper agreement follows research by Material Focus earlier this year that precious metals contained inside millions of electrical items that are either hoarded, thrown away, illegally exported, or stolen could provide a £927m boost to the UK economy.
The group's report - titled Electrical Waste: Challenges and Opportunities - found that UK households are holding on to 880 million unused electrical items and throwing away 103,000 tonnes of electricals, costing the economy an estimated £488m in lost valuable materials.
A number of schemes have sought to tackle the UK's "lost electricals" and circular materials challenge at a consumer-level. For example, earlier this year Virgin Media O2 offered Brits chance to recycle UK's estimated 18m unused games consoles and teamed up with environmental charity Hubbub to provide hundreds of unwanted tablets and smartphones to help people in need get online.
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