Steel

Steel Recycling Facts

• Recycling steel and tin cans saves 74% of the energy used to produce them.

• Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

• In 2007, Americans recycled 65% of their steel cans - an all-time high.

• Americans throw out enough iron and steel to supply all the nation’s automakers on a continuous basis.

• A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining wastes by about 70%.

• Steel can be recycled forever without degrading in quality.

• The steel industry's annual recycling saves the equivalent energy to electrically power about 18 million households for a year. Every time a ton of steel is recycled, 2500 pounds of iron ore, 1000 pounds of coal and 40 pounds of limestone is preserved.

• Every day Americans use enough steel and tin cans to make a steel pipe running from Los Angeles to New York... and back. If we only recycle one-tenth of the cans we now throw away, we'd save about 3.2 billion of them every year.

• The average American throws out about 61 lbs. of tin cans every month.

• About 70% of all metal is used just once and discarded. The remaining 30% is recycled. After five cycles, one-fourth of 1% of the metal remains in circulation.