NORTH AMERICA'S MOST RECYCLED MATERIAL

Steel is North America's most recycled material. It has an average recycling rate in excess of 50 percent since World War II and over 60 percent since 1970. Last year, over 67 million tons of steel scrap were recycled in the United States.

The sources for steel scrap are plentiful, but are classified by three main categories: home scrap, prompt scrap and obsolete scrap. Home scrap is the scrap that is produced from within the mill itself and is available within weeks. Prompt scrap is scrap that it is produced from the manufacturing process of new steel products, and is available within months. Obsolete scrap is scrap produced from steel products at the end of their lives and it may be decades before this scrap is available (example: The Golden Gate Bridge).

Even while two out of every three pounds of new steel are produced from old steel, it is still necessary to continue to use some quantities of virgin materials. This is true because many steel products remain in service as durable goods for decades at a time and demand for steel around the world continue to grow.

Beyond the steel scrap itself, the steel industry has long recycled its by-products: mill scale, steelmaking slags, water and processing liquids such as spent pickle liquor, just to name a few. Likewise, steelmaking dusts and sludges are processed so that other metals can be recovered, such as the zinc that is vaporized during steelmaking into electric furnace dust and recovered.

Steelmaking, based on recycling, requires less energy and material resources than using virgin iron ore from the ground.

Steel is the engine that drives the recycling of many consumer goods as can be seen with the virtual 100 percent recycling rate of automobiles, the more than 80 percent recycling rate of appliances and the more than 60 percent recycling rate of steel packaging. For more information on the industry's steel recycling accomplishments, visit the Steel Recycling Institute website at http://www.recycle-steel.org.