Recycling of metal has gained immense importance across the globe as it is the best way to conserve the natural resources found on earth. Metal recycling also saves energy and natural resources that are highly utilized to mine new metal from virgin ore. Metals that are widely recycled include Steel, Copper and Aluminum. The best thing is that they are reprocessed repeatedly without any alteration in their properties, strength and durability.  Find out some important facts on recycling steel, copper and aluminum.

Steel

●    The rate of steel recycling in North America is more than plastic combined.
●    People of US use around 100 million steel cans every day.
●    The steel industry has been recycling for around 150 years.
●    The largest source of raw material of the steel industry is scrapped metal.
●    Steel recycling saves 75 percent of the energy that is required while extracting the metal from virgin ore. The energy saved is sufficient to power 18 million homes.
●    About 65 percent of the metal produced in the US is reprocessed into new steel every year.
●    One ton of reprocessed steel saves 1,400 pounds of coal, 2,500 pounds of iron ore and 120 pounds of limestone.
●    A household appliance typically termed as “white good” is manufactured using approximately 65 percent steel.
●    Steel cans are produced using 25 percent of recycled steel.

Copper

●    Copper is a non-ferrous metal that you can recycle infinitely. Copper by itself or even when made into alloys can be used over and over again.
●    The metal was first used by humans about 10,000 years ago.
●    Copper resources found around the world are estimated at nearly 5.8 trillion pounds of which only about 0.7 trillion pounds have been extracted. It is because the rate of copper recycling is quite high in comparison to any other engineering metal. 
●    Every year in the US, nearly equal volume of copper is recovered by reprocessing the metal as is extracted from virgin ore. If you exclude production of wire, which uses newly refined copper, the amount of the material used by brass and copper mills, foundries, ingot makers, powder plants, foundries and other industries shows that about three-fourths (72%) comes from recycled copper scrap.
●    Major proportion of this copper scarp isnew scrap, such as turnings and chips from screw machine production. The rest is old scrap, which include junked automobile radiators, discarded electric cable etc.
●    The value of recycling copper is so high that high quality copper scrap generally has 95% of the value of the primary material mined from virgin ore.
 
Aluminum

●    Around 65% of America’s aluminum is recycled currently.
●    On an average, 2 out of every 3 aluminum cans are recycled in the US.
●    Average aluminum cans are made from recycled aluminum.
●    If you recycle aluminum can today, it will be back on the shelf of the grocery in about 90 days.
●    Twenty years back, about 19 aluminum cans were required to make one pound. However, today the cans have become light and now it requires about 29 cans to make one pound. This shows that less metal is wasted now. This savesconsiderable amount of energy and also other environmental resources.
●    Manufacturing aluminum cans from recycled metal requires 95% less energy than creating cans from new aluminum. It is possible to manufacture 20 recycled aluminum cans with the energy required to produce a single can from new metal.
●    Reprocessing of a single aluminum can saves sufficient energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for around four hours or run television for about three hours.
●    Producing beverage cans from reprocessed aluminum reduces air pollution by around 95%.

You will find a number of scrap metal recycling companies playing active role in collecting and recycling scrap metal.