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Are you doing a school project? Need more information on what happens to steel? These resources are especially for you!
The Steel Making Process
Find out what is involved in making steel.
The Continuous Recycling Loop Of Steel
Reveals how recycled steel is used to make new steel.
The Steel Can Story
This one page illustrated story follows the lifecycle of a steel can from shop shelf to recycling bin to shop shelf again.
What can I recycle?
We all use many canned food products at home. You might also have empty aerosols and paint cans. You can find out which steel cans are suitable for recycling, how to tell if they are steel and how to prepare them for recycling.
The Steel Making Process
Every year the Australian steel industry recycles millions of tonnes of scrap steel from recycled cans, cars, appliances, construction materials and other steel products. This scrap is melted down to produce new steel. Steel cans, including food, paint and aerosol cans, are an important part of the steel recycling loop and were recycled at a rate of 42% in 2002.
Recycling is an integral part of the steel making process. Steel mills use one of two types of furnaces to make new steel. Both furnaces recycle old steel products into new steel, but each is used to create different products for varied applications.
The first - the basic oxygen steel making process - uses a maximum of 25% scrap steel to make new steel. This furnace produces the steel used in flat-rolled steel products, such as cans, appliances and automobiles.
The other type of steel making furnace - the electric arc furnace - melts virtually 100% scrap steel to make new steel. This steel is used primarily to make products that are long shapes, like steel plate, rebar and structural beams.
And, since all new steel products contain recycled steel, when you buy steel you help to close the recycling loop by buying recycled!
The Continuous Recycling Loop Of Steel
Steel is a unique material because it always contains recycled steel. Each year, millions of tonnes of pre- and post-consumer steel products, including used steel cans, appliances (such as fridges and washing machines), automobiles and construction materials, are recycled by steel mills into every tonne of new steel produced.
In fact, with the exception of the earliest steel making methods, recycling has always been an integral part of the steel making process.
What's more, when you return your used steel cans for recycling, you are helping to ensure that new steel products are made from recycled steel. Steel can be recycled again at the end of their useful lives. Used steel cans are recycled into new steel cans, which may one day be recycled again into an appliance like a fridge or washing machine.
An infrastructure of ferrous scrap processors exists to prepare all types of steel products for recycling. Processors prepare and ship scrap steel to steel mills and foundries for remelting into new steel.
When you realise how useful steel is, it seems a terrible waste to send it to landfill!
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