The scrap metal recycling industry is a fast-growing business that accounts for up to $90 billion in economic activity across the U.S., employs thousands of people, and contributes millions in tax revenue.
Making recycled metals available to our manufacturers helps us economically and proves something that the industry has known for a while: scrap metal recycling saves money.
The scrap metal recycling industry has also always maintained a strong environmental focus. As the advocates of recycling are quick to note, keeping these metals out of landfills serves a major environmental purpose.
Taking our scrap metal to a recycling facility and having it recycled for reuse benefits the environment but also our finances. Our economy benefits tremendously from having recycled metals continuously available and chances are, if more individuals and business owners learned how scrap metal recycling saves money, our recycling rates for scrap metal would increase.
How Scrap Metal Recycling Saves Money
The scrap metal recycling industry has continued to grow because of the high demand among manufacturers for metals to use in the production process. A good example of this is steel which is in very high demand today. Steel is one of the most recycled raw materials in the world and the U.S. has been exporting recycled metals like iron and steel to more than 90 countries across the globe.
Scrap metal is also highly valuable because it can be recycled multiple times because it can be re-melted and reshaped into new products. This prevents manufacturers from having to invest money to finance the high cost of mining for virgin ore to make new metals.
Since metals can be repeatedly recycled there’s high demand for items like:
- Old vehicles
- Appliances
- Steel debris from construction sites
- Farm equipment
This can also include any other items made with metal that can be recycled. For example, recycling a common item like aluminum cans helps us save quite a bit in terms of the energy required to make a can from scratch. By reducing the cost of production during the manufacturing process, we can hold down the cost of new cans. It’s also worth noting that if you have scrap metal and decide to recycle it, you can earn cash for those items.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that the manufacturing process benefits from the availability of as much recycled materials as we can provide.
How Recycling Scrap Metal Saves Your Business Money
There are other ways that recycling your scrap helps you save money. For businesses in particular it helps reduce your disposal costs. Removing scrap metal from your office waste stream will save your business money by lowering the cost of hauling trash to a disposal site and reduce the number of times your trash needs to be picked up.
If you decide to recycle your scrap metal contact GLE Scrap Metal, which has a logistics department that will make recycling easy for your business through on-site pickup. GLE Scrap Metal operates a fleet of trucks for those pickups, and also have relationships with independent carriers to offer businesses the most cost-effective recycling solutions. It’s a smart, economical idea for businesses to establish a recycling program for any scrap metal materials at their office.
Why It’s Important to Recycle Scrap Metal
Recycling rates for scrap metal could and should be stronger. It’s as simple as taking any scrap metal we own to an experienced recycling firm like GLE Scrap Metal.
There’s a lot of common household and office items made from a variety of metals; this includes copper, steel, aluminum, brass, and iron. Unfortunately, often times these items are viewed as junk and gets thrown out rather than being recycled.
This is a huge environmental problem. As more and more scrap metal ends up in landfills the more serious long-term environmental consequences we are left to struggle with.
Scrap metal contains toxins like mercury and lead that can seep out into the soil and water surrounding landfills, creating longtime pollution problems that pose risks to our health and to the wildlife living in the area. Recycling keeps these items out of landfills and prevents environmental contamination.
Recycling also conserves natural resources by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saves us mining, transportation, and environmental cleanup costs. Using the recycling method is a great way to conserve precious resources like water, energy, fossil fuels, and land needed to produce new metals.
Creating a healthier environment for all of us by helping to prevent pollution and protect our planet’s ecological balance is something everyone can contribute to. There are no contributions that are too small when it comes to protecting our environment. Everything from driving less often to turning off lights and using energy-efficient appliances helps.
Recycling as many items as we can is also important and recycling scrap metal is especially important because of that strong need for metal by manufacturers.
Consumers can also help boost the recycling industry by making it a point to buy new products made from recycled materials. There are manufacturers that advertise which items being sold are recycled-content products.
This is also a key reason why advocates of recycling are working so hard to create a strong recycling culture here in the United States: to promote a process that gives us significant long-term environmental and economic advantages.
Conclusion
Consumers, businesses, and even government agencies can all help save money by recycling scrap metal. Once that scrap metal has been collected by a recycling firm it gets cleaned and processed. It can then be used in manufacturing and bought and sold just like raw materials.
You can do your part to boost the recycling rate by bringing your scrap metal to an experienced firm like GLE Scrap Metal. They process and recycle all base and precious metals that get supplied to domestic mills and global end-users to then be transformed into new products.
To learn more, contact GLE Scrap Metal or call us at 855-SCRAP-88 and request a quote.
