Structural steel is made up of 93% recycled content on average and has a recycling rate of 98%—both the highest of any building framing material. While other products can only be recycled into a lower-quality product (down-cycled), steel can be recycled repeatedly and remade into new members without any loss of quality (multi-cycled). The high level of reuse makes it the first and only true cradle-to-cradle building framing material.
The majority of the recycled steel in domestically produced structural steel comes from automobiles, which is then upcycled into steel framing.
For more information on structural steel sustainability visitwww.aisc.org/sustainability.