Orange County Steel Recycling – A Valuable Metal With Extensive Use

By Author: Fred Hoffman
Total Articles: 31
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Recognized as a versatile metal, steel plays an instrumental role in creating an array of essential commodities that ranges from household containers to food cans and automobiles. The essential metallurgical property of the material makes it highly recyclable and no degradation in its quality takes place when it is reprocessed. With a reprocessing rate of 66.2%, steel containers are considered as one of the highly recycled products in the US. That is why the number of steel recycling industries is surging steadily in Orange County, as high importance is given on conserving this versatile natural resource.

Major Sources of Steel Scrap

For producing best steel products, it is important to consider the consistency and quality of the scrap that will undergo the recycling process. Scraps are produced in a range of physical forms and sometimes trash materials are found in them. Effective classification and management of the scrap materials are important to manufacture quality steel products. A number of scrap metal recycling industries in Orange County are highly proficient in evaluating the quality of the material.

Though ...
... steel scraps are available from a wide variety of sources, they are mainly classified into three categories:

Home scrap: It is supplied by the mill, refineries and foundries and available in few weeks.

Prompt scrap: It is produced by a range of industrial or engineering products used in industries.

Obsolete scrap: It comes from steel made products or structures that are likely to exist for a long period of time like The Golden Gate Bridge. So, the scrap is only available after a specific time period and it may take a few decades also.

Scrap metal is considered as the single and most valued source for raw material by the steel recycling industries. Nowadays, most of the steelmaking furnaces found in several reprocessing industries have been designed aptly to consume metal scrap.

Few essential facts on recycling of steel

Steel is the most recycled metal on the earth when compared to paper, aluminum, glass or plastic combined.

In the year 2011, around 85 million tons of the material was reprocessed in the US and it represents a steady growth of about 10 million net tons from the preceding year.

In 2012, the overall rate of recycling steel in the United States was 88 percent and around 84 million tons of the metal was reprocessed.

As per the Steel Recycling Institute, i.e. SRI, a major business wing of the American Iron and Steel Institute or AISI, the steel industries in North America have recycled around one billion of the valuable material since 1988 and it is undoubtedly a major achievement. In addition, SRI also states that about 50 percent of this valued natural resource produced in the United States has been reprocessed using the steelmaking procedure in each of the last 50 years.

Gregory L. Crawford, who is the executive director of the Steel Recycling Institute, opines that though steel has emerged as one of the most recycled metal in the U.S., there still exists scope for betterment in the situation. He added that it is essential to educate consumers and also the recycling coordinators regarding the inclusion of certain commodities for recycling, particularly empty aerosol cans made from steel. This will remarkably contribute in overall increase of tonnage for the recycling industries.

Orange County metal recycling industries are considering this fact quite seriously to improve their condition even more.

About the Author: Fred Hoffman has been in the industry of metal recycling Orange County for over a decade. According to him, the practice of scrap metal recycling in Orange County will not only help us keep the environment clean but also make some additional money.