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Aurubis sells the aluminum and plastic it recovers to those industries; copper and other nonferrous metals go into its own ovens. In the tidy yard, the dust is swept daily and fed to the smelter. "We have no waste here," Laser said.
奧如比斯廠將提取的鋁和塑料銷往相關廠家；銅和其他非鐵金屬則進入自家熔爐。在整潔的場院里，塵埃按日清掃，送入熔爐。“我們這里不生成廢物。”拉澤說。
Worldwide, only about a fifth of all electronic waste is recycled, according to a 2017 UN report. Aurubis even takes shipments from the United States. "But I do wonder sometimes why such a highly industrialized country would give up such resources," Roth said. "They're sitting on billions." That's starting to change. Apple, for example, encourages customers to trade in old iPhones; an intelligent robot in Texas dismantles them and extracts materials for new devices.
根據2017年聯合國的報道，全世界只有約五分之一的電子廢物得到回收。奧如比斯甚而從美國進口廢品。“但我也不時疑惑，為何如此發達的工業國家將這樣的資源白白送人。”拉澤說，“坐失幾十億美元的財富。”這正開始轉變。例如，蘋果公司鼓勵用戶舊機換新機；德克薩斯的一臺智能機器人將電子廢物拆解，用于制造新設備。
But copper exemplifies a general challenge: There's a limit to what even aggressive recycling can accomplish. At Aurubis, recycled copper accounts for only a third of production; the rest still comes from mines. World copper production has quadrupled in the past half century and is still growing. The technologies we need to get off fossil fuels require a lot of copper; a single giant wind turbine uses about 33 tons.
但銅也代表了一種普遍的挑戰：即便是最積極的回收策略也有力所不及之處。在奧如比斯，回收銅只占總產品的三分之一，其他部分還是來自銅礦。過去半個世紀中，全球銅產量增長了三倍，并持續上升。我們要擺脫化石燃料所需的技術需要大量的銅。一臺巨大的風力發電渦輪所需的銅就約有30噸。
"Demand is growing," Laser said. "You'll never cover that with recycling." The circular economy is going to require other strategies.
拉澤說：“需求越來越大。你永遠也無法用回收來全面覆蓋。”循環經濟需要其他策略。
