Sustainability

The Steel Drum Life Cycle

Steel’s attributes, including its inherent durability and recyclability, make it an ideal fit for a sustainable circular economy. It is the most recycled material in the world. Once produced, steel can be continually recycled into new steel products. And, while many other products can only be downcycled into a lower-quality product, steel can be recycled over and over again and remade without any loss of quality.
Life Cycle Analysis

Recycling/Reuse

Steel recycling is important to the circular economy as it conserves valuable resources and diverts useful materials from going to landfills. Millions of tons of steel are diverted from waste streams to recycling streams every year due to steel’s magnetic properties that make it easy to separate from
solid waste.

Domestic steel mills recycle their own steel scrap, as well as scrap from downstream product manufacturing processes and end-of-life products, to conserve energy emissions and natural resources. There are typically 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap recycled per year into new steel products in North America.

There’s More!

  1. Steel is 100% recyclable, which means it can be recycled into the same material of the same quality again and again.

  2. In the past 30 years, more than one billion tons of steel scrap have been recycled into new steel by the North American steel industry.

  3. On average, the United States processes enough ferrous scrap, by weight, to build 25 Eiffel Towers every day of the year!

  4. Through recycling, the steel industry saves enough energy to supply the annual electricity needs of more than 18 million homes.

  5. The steel industry’s need for steel scrap is a job creator, supporting more than 531,000 scrap recycling jobs and generating more than $110 billion in economic activity.

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