The old copper-based infrastructure is being replaced in a £15bn rollout of high-speed full-fibre broadband. In what is one of the UK’s largest private national infrastructure programmes over 30 million homes will be linked to full-fibre broadband.
BT is working with a recycling company and sells copper granules created from surplus copper cables. So far, the deal is said to have raised over £105m and is thought to be the first of its kind.
To date the full-fibre programme has reached more than 15m homes and the aim is to have reached 25m by 2026 and 30m by 2030.
The programme is being led BT, through its Openreach division, and has recovered 3,300 tonnes of copper in the year to the end of March 2024. It has struck a deal with a bank and global recycler EMR to support the extraction and recycling of copper cable from its network until 2028.
Part of Openreach’s commitment to greater sustainability the company estimates that it might be able to recover up to 200,000 tonnes of copper through the 2030s.
Copper is widely used in datacentres and in electrical equipment such as wiring, wind turbines and motors and if that figure of 200,000 tonnes of copper is achieved BT could be sitting on a valuable commodity worth, at today’s prices, over £1.5bn.
A 2022 study by S&P Global, the rating agency, has estimated that copper demand is projected to grow from 25m metric tonnes today to about 50m by 2035.
