Reusable and recyclable products
Reusing and recycling construction products avoids or reduces waste and saves primary resources. By using materials that have a greater potential for reuse or recycling, it is more likely that the value of these products at their end of life will be realised in future applications.
Some materials are more recyclable than others; for example, the process of recycling may be easier or the recyclate may have a higher economic value. It is therefore more likely that these products will be efficiently recycled in the future and building designers should be encouraged to use such products.
Steel is 100 per cent recyclable and can be recycled again and again with current technology, without any degradation in terms of properties or performance. This property sets steel apart from most other common construction materials.
Unlike many other construction materials, the intrinsic economic value of scrap steel ensures that it is efficiently recovered from the waste stream and either reused or recycled. By using steel the designer can be confident that in the future, the steel he uses today, will be recycled into new products that are able to meet future needs.
It’s already happening! The recovery rate of steel construction products from UK demolition sites is currently 94 per cent with 10 per cent being reused and 84 per cent recycled.
In a recent report by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), on opportunities to use recycled materials in buildings, they state that they ‘consider the recycling of steel to have been optimised across the industry’.
Reuse of steel construction products offers even greater environmental advantage than recycling. Already some industries, such as the agricultural sector, commonly reuse steel structures and cladding components.
There is, however, significant scope for increasing reuse of steel construction products and work is underway within the sector to promote and facilitate this. The proportion of recovered products that are reused will increase as design for deconstruction is better understood and a stronger market for reusable steel construction products is stimulated. The ability of the steel construction sector to facilitate these advantageous processes has been enhanced by the standardisation of components and connections.
Steel can be reused at both the product and the whole building level.
Steel products commonly reused include
- Piles (sheet and bearing piles)
- Structural members including hollow sections
- Light gauge product such as purlins and rails
All new steel has a recycled content of between 10 and 100 per cent.
Global consumption of steel products continues to rise, mainly as a consequence of industrialisation in the less developed world. For example, the world average per capita consumption of crude steel in 2002 was 162 kg. By comparison, the EU-15 average consumption is 399 kg/capita, UK consumption was 241 kg/capita and average consumption in Africa was just 34 kg/capita.
Global demand for new steel exceeds the supply of scrap steel by a factor of around two and therefore it is not currently possible for all new steel to be produced exclusively from scrap.
While this remains the case, and as construction steel is already nearly 100 per cent recycled, there is no net environmental benefit in specifying a minimum recycled steel content.
