Should you live in a non-refurbished pre-1970’s house, the chances are water pipes, roof flashings and box gutters are of lead. Although lead has fallen out of favour due to its toxicity in water, it continues to be used in many other aspects of the commercial and building industries.
While the recycling of household waste products is still in its infancy, metals have been recycled for over 150 years. In spite of the fact that lead is not used as extensively in industry as it used to be, scrap lead is still a much sought after metal by scrap metal companies.The Manor Scrap Company lead Bristol in its recycling efforts to reduce, along with other scrap metal companies, the carbon footprint by producing new metals from old, when compared to mining new metal reserves. Of all the recycled metals, lead comes out top with 75% of all new lead products originating from recycled materials.Lead is one of the easiest of metals to recognise. Normally of a dull grey colour, tapping the pipe will produce a thud rather than a ringing one would hear from a copper pipe. Lead pipes are never straight, and joints appear to be just a swelling where pipes join. Scrape a piece of lead with a sharp object and a bright silver score mark will result due to the softness of the material.