"There is likely a recycling yard not too far from you. I wouldn't look at it a "would it pay for the gas" argument. Copper is a finite resource, much rarer than iron, steel, and aluminum, and should not be tossed, just for conservation reasons alone, not to mention that in a landfill environment copper salts leach out of landfill, potentially poisoning groundwater reservoirs."
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Burn gas and wear out the car just to take some scrap to a recycling center, regardless of whether you get enough money to make it worthwhile? I guess oil isn't a finite resource? And as for not tossing it in the trash for safety reasons, that's just plain crazy. Just look at all the other streams of various types of trash that are legally going into landfills, many of them containing copper and far worse. Household batteries for example. The leachate from all landfills contains all kinds of toxins and has to be contained today with a liner. Whether this guy's copper pipe winds up there or not isn't going to make any difference. It's fairly likely the copper would be recovered at the waste facility anyway, prior to the trash going into the landfill. That's what's done here in NJ.