Steel is North America’s Number #1 Recycled Material. Each year, more steel is recycled than aluminum, paper, glass and plastic combined!
Scrap has become the steel industry’s single largest source of raw material because it is economically advantageous to recycle old steel into new steel. In light of this, steelmaking furnaces have been designed to consume steel scrap.
In fact, in the past 50 years, approximately 50 percent of the steel produced in this country has been recycled through the steelmaking process. Thanks to the steel industry’s impressive history of recycling, a wide variety of collection programs exist to recycle steel products.
All of these programs tap into the steel recycling infrastructure, a well-established network of more than 2,000 ferrous scrap processors and more than 70 end markets. This steel recycling infrastructure, which has grown and matured over the years in its efforts to meet the steel industry’s demand for steel scrap, is the reason today’s steel recycling efforts actually supersede those of the past.
– source Steel Recycling Institute
