In the past, the recovery of metals from the liquid waste was considered to be uneconomic. The application of the legislation that regards the dangerous components, gives a significant motive for recovering the metals not only from an environmental point of view but also from an economic one.

It is possible to recycle the recovered metals into the coating baths or selling or returning them to the suppliers or reusing them as manufacturing materials for the anodes.

The evaporation constitutes a successful method for recovering a large number of chemical substances that are includes in the sewages, whereas the method of reverse osmosis uses semi-permeable membrane in order to separate water from dissolved salts. Moreover, the exchange of ions can be used for the drag-out recovery from the rinsing bath used for the coated products, while electrodyalisis is used in order to recover and separate the ions that are found in the water solution. Finally the electrodyalisis can be applied in the recovery of gold, silver, tin, coper, zinc and cadmium.