Zinc: recycling, recycled zinc, reused zinc-Metalpedia

In recent years, with zinc smelting technologies continually improving, consumption of zinc as a raw material has been huge. As a result, zinc ore resources have declined and metal zinc is facing serious raw material shortages. Increasingly, ores from different areas will cease to be mined in future. Therefore, responsible usage and recycling of existing resources has gradually become the focus.
In some countries with resource shortages, such as Japan and Germany, the renewable zinc industry has become quite mature, and zinc recycling technologies rank among the best in the world. Approximately 75% of the zinc consumed worldwide originates from mined ores and the remaining 25% from recycled or secondary zinc. The level of recycling increases each year, in step with progress in zinc production and recycling technology. In addition, zinc can be recycled from every process of production and utilization, such as waste generated from galvanized steel production, waste materials from manufacture and installation and waste from end-products.
In the industrially developed countries, zinc recycling has grown into a mature and perfected industry. The recycled zinc is sufficient not only to meet the demand of domestic zinc industries, but also a large amount of it can be exported to foreign countries. For instance, China imports a lot of zinc from these countries every year.