Recycling old cabling?

Tue Aug 17 11:29:50 UTC 2010

Just out of curiosity, is anyone here recycling old cabling and plant 
infrastructure for their raw materials, or engaging a recycler to handle 
those materials?  Where I work, there is almost always a renovation 
project going on.  This provides opportunities to rip out 
Cat3/Cat5/long-abandoned thicknet/thinnet/FDDI-grade fiber/etc, which we 
normally do.  Most of the time that old cabling ends up in the dumpster, 
but I'm wondering if anyone is recycling it, either by their choice, or as 
the result of company policy or relevant laws in your area?

Cat3/Cat5 can be broken down to raw materials with some effort, but I 
haven't seen many recyclers with an economically viable process for doing 
it.  Coax is a bit tougher, but not impossible (same questions about 
economic viability still apply).  Fiber can be tough, expecially if you're 
dealing with something like 20+ year old gel-buffered cable where the has 
long-since dried out.

I'd be interested to hear other peoples' experiences along these lines.

jms