Recycled metal, the good and the bad…

The metals that we use to manufacture our cars, our building materials, kitchen and home appliances, and even our food containers combine to make metal the most recycled material on the planet.  Almost everyone knows at this point in time not to throw metal in the trash.  In our last blog we discussed the environmental consequences of metal manufacturing.  In this blog we wanted to talk about metal recycling understanding both the benefits and the environmental concerns.  Metal recyclers in the United States handle appx 120 million tons of recycled materials each year.  In fact, metal recycling is around a $20 billion industry in the United States, that’s larger than U.S. steel manufacturing industry.  So, what are the environmental benefits of metal recycling?  Well, by using recycled materials as input the entire process of mining for iron ore is avoided.  This eliminates the deforestation and land destruction that would have previously taken place in order to produce the metal.  This is clearly a great thing but does using recycled input make metal manufacturing harmless to our environment?  Unfortunately it does not...    

Manufacturing metal using recycled input still requires a high temperature furnace.  The furnace is used to melt the recycled metal in order to be reformed or reshaped.   As we've talked about in previous blogs these furnaces are highly damaging to our environment because while in use they omit significant greenhouse gases and other toxins into our atmosphere.  Scientists and other researchers are working on technologies that will allow us to reform steel and other metals without having to use high polluting furnaces.   However, these methods could be decades away if not more.  Fortunately, recycled metal is big business in the world and it should continue to flourish as time goes on.  It’s clear that using recycled metals in the manufacturing of new metals is the environmental choice, well at least for now.  Many experts believe that in order to truly combat climate change we'll need to create eco-friendly alternatives to high omitting furnaces like those used to manufacture recycled metals.   Let’s hope these discoveries don’t take too long, personally I’d feel way better about it if we had lots of smart people working on it.  We need more…