Closing the loop: David’s lifelong commitment to helping recycle critical minerals

Warehouse Supervisor David brings more than fifty years’ experience to the job at Glencore’s San Jose recycling facility.

He makes sure that materials coming into the warehouse ready for recycling are properly documented and sampled to determine their recyclable metal content before further processing.

“I like getting involved in customer interactions and try to go out of my way to help them and make sure they’re happy,” he explains. 

Glencore’s assets have 75 years of experience in the recycling business, centred at its copper and nickel smelters in Canada and supported through its sampling facilities in the United States.  These operations help close the loop for critical materials like copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc and other precious metals. 

But as David knows, not many people think of Glencore when they think of circularity. 

“People know Glencore for our mining operations, but they don’t hear about the work we do in recycling. Our customers in the Bay Area are big manufacturers of electronic components - they send us anything from PC boards, hard drives and chips to be recycled and repurposed as raw materials.”

David and his team analyse samples of recycled material to check for quantities of precious metals like copper and aluminium. This work means that Glencore can play its part in the development of the circular economy, diverting materials from landfill and helping to minimise the environmental impact of single-use metals.

Reflecting on his long career in recycling, David hopes to keep going for as long as he can. 

“At 71 years’ old I still feel energetic,” he explains. “At the end of the day, I want to be remembered as someone that did the best that he could in all aspects of his life.