Steel has been around seemingly forever. Back in the day when the Golden Gate Bridge was manufactured approximately 83,000 tons of the stuff was used. But steel, as with many things, has undergone a metamorphosis of sorts thanks to science and technology. If you built that same Golden Gate Bridge in this day and age you could cut the tonnage of steel used by about 50% – so strong is today’s steel.

Yesterday Versus Today

Here are just a number of things that, though still made from steel, have cut way back on the amount used:

• 20-year-old high-rise buildings would use approximately 3% less steel if built today
• in 2002, thanks to new steel properties and recycling, sites of construction demolition supplied approximately 95% of all steel needed for products containing steel
• 10 years ago, the specific types of steel used in today’s cars was not even in existence
• since 10 years ago, a 30% strength increase has been seen in dent resistant steel parts
• today’s steel is far better environmentally than the steel from years ago

Rebuilt, Refurbished and Recycled

Did you know that steel products, no matter how many times they are recycled, can be made to be just as strong as they originally were? You can recycle steel as many times as you want. If you combine the amount of glass, plastic, aluminum and paper that is recycled every year, the amount of recycled steel alone can beat it. The United States is responsible for about 69% of all steel recycling. How much does that amount to? Only an annual tonnage of approximately 80,000,000. Yeah, what’s the big deal about recycling steel? Conservation my friend. Limestone of about 120 pounds, coal of about 1400 pounds and iron ore of approximately 2500 pounds are saved by 1 ton of recycled steel.

So, anybody out there ‘steel’ have questions about recycling steel?