Hello,
Please don't laugh at this question, I was just wondering!
Why can't you recycle old brass the same way we recycle pop/beer cans? I'm not an enviro dork, but it pains me to have to throw away used brass never to be used again! There are a few reasons I could think of for not doing it, no control of the alloy being recycled, hard to "clean" the alloy of the leftover contaminants from firing...
Any thoughts?
Elk Country

I used to save all the scrap brass that I created or picked up at the range, with the idea of making some bucks. When I had a couple hundred pounds took it in to the recycler and he declined, I threw in the closest dumpster not on his lot.
Now days when I go to the 500 yard line I'll find several hundred spent cases on the ground, 7.62 and 5.56. I'll pick up the brass and throw it over into the bushes just to avoid mixing it up with my brass. I'm sure there's thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of cases over there. I'm sure that some will guess there was one heck of a battle right there decades ago.
Jim

< !--color--> I keep a medium sized card board box in my reloading shed just for the brass that is worn out or split. The metals recyling places will pay you a pretty good amount for the brass. Every couple of months I take it in and there is usually enough to by a box of bullets. I even pick up some of the scrap brass at the varoius ranges that I go to, just to recyle it. For the cash.

Better check with the local scrap metal dealer,as the ones I checked with here wouldn't take it,but that was a few years ago.

Steel anvils? Not in rifle/pistol primers. Shotgun primers are steel except for the actual cup.

I can understand why recyclers would want the brass deprimed, to rule out the occasional live primer that would make a dangerous mess while the brass was being melted.

Elk Country: Here in western Washington (the mecca for recycling) I get thirty cents a pound for my unwanted brass. It has to be deprimed, however. No big deal since I deprime all my brass before polishing. I encourage your efforts: "Unless you recycle you are throwing it all away".

Yep! You most certainly can recycle it at any scrap metal dealer.