After Use: Recycling Metal Building Products

We see photos of the giant plastic island floating in the Pacific Ocean, and everyone from toddlers to grandparents is aware of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle. The construction industry has taken on the task of reducing job-site waste, and we address it in a variety of ways. But during demolition of buildings or renovations that require partial demolition, we create tons of waste. That’s the bad news. The good news for us in the metal construction industry is that the material we install is the most likely to be recycled and is the most valuable to the recyclers.

“Approximately 94 percent of steel from a demolition of a commercial building gets recycled,” says David Keeling, director of recycling for the Steel Recycling Institute. “That’s a fairly good number. Obviously, you lose things in the process of the demolition, depending on if it’s a teardown or an implosion, although implosions are a very small percentage of the whole demolition process.”

In fact, one of the great selling points about steel and metal is its recyclability. It is the foundation of the product’s sustainability claims. “Steel can be recycled over and over again and never lose its physical properties,” Keeling says. “More importantly, it doesn’t have any memory. A steel beam can become a hood on your automobile or a steel can or whatever the case may be. It’s just a matter of chemistry.”

Mark Thimons is vice president of sustainability for the American Iron and Steel Institute. He says, “That’s one of the features of steel that we really try to emphasize because it’s nearly the only construction product that you can say that about. Concrete gets recycled, but it typically doesn’t get recycled back into concrete. Wood gets recycled into things like mulch and fiberboard.”

The Dirty Work

But recycling doesn’t happen by waving a magic wand. It is a hands-on, intense process that requires several steps and multiple players. Ron Tazalaar is president of Economy Disposal, which provides roll-offs and other services for gathering construction waste. He also owns TAX Construction and Demolition Recycling LLC in McCook, Ill. He describes a typical construction demolition process. “Often when a roof gets dismantled, typically the steel structure stays in place. So you’re getting the foam and membrane and the pea gravel and whatever else is on top of a commercial roof. If they are doing a complete demo and they cut the whole thing off together, what we see is the structure and the sheeting. There are two different classifications of steel there. There’s sheet steel, which has some value. And the structural steel, which has a better value. We’ll separate those two and ship them off to a processing facility. They’ll either bale it or shred it, and then take it to a mill to be reused.” The processing facilities are known as material recovery facilities (MRF) and pronounced “murphs” in the industry.

Within that description there is a specific knowledge. Different metals and steels have different values, which are based on their grades. Copper, for example, has such high value that it has become a target of thieves. In fact, Tazelaar experienced a break-in at his facility and the thief stole all the copper and sold it to different scrap yards.

Steel itself can be a fairly complicated valuation process. “There’s 316 different grades of steel scrap according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries,” says Keeling. “You want to keep the different grades separated, which will enhance their value. Depending on the grade, thickness and length, there’s a difference between prepared material and unprepared material. Each scrap yard has different specifications, which are directly from the end market, the steel mill or the iron foundry they sell to.”

Different metals get dumped into different rolloffs staged around the site, but not all materials get sorted on-site. Often, they get dumped into one container, and a company such as Tazelaars’ hauls it to his site where his team sorts it.

“Metal is the low-hanging fruit,” he says. “Some guys on the line pick only brick or concrete, but it’s everybody’s job to pick metal.”

That separation of materials, which is what Keeling called prepping, can get complicated and be difficult. If it’s too messy to separate different grades, it may not be worth capturing the material because the recycler can’t get value for it. Tazelaar explains that scrap yards will take metal if it has some insulation attached to it. They pay per ton, but when they send it through the shredding system, they only capture the metal, then discount the overall value based on how much insulation was included.

A good example of a material that yields very little value based on its total weight is insulated metal panels (IMPs). “For the time you may invest in separating the insulation and metal, the yield of metal is so small it may not pay off,” says Tazelaar. That is, unless you have a good system to easily separate the two. “We can separate an IMP pretty quickly,” he says, “with an excavator and a grapple.”

What’s the Market?

The driving force in the decision to recycle one material versus another is the value of the material. But the price of steel or copper or aluminum may fluctuate considerably. It has been widely reported in mainstream press that China has stopped accepting recyclable material from the United States. Most of that is from household waste and is plastic and cardboard. “It doesn’t affect us as much,” says William Turley, executive director of the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association, “but it does affect us to some degree.” According to Turley, the steel tariffs enacted by the Trump administration have not affected the recycling industry, and that fluctuations in prices are so unpredictable that scrap yards may have to stockpile materials while they wait for the price to come back up.

But that doesn’t mean the industry is in a downturn. Construction recycling is predominantly located in urban areas, primarily due to the concentration of supply of material. “It’s getting a little saturated in some areas,” says Turley, “we have to ship farther and farther.”

Turley does point to a huge influx in capital as recyclers refurbish plants, about 95 percent of which are privately held. The investment is driven to make the plants more efficient. As mentioned, the separating process is hands-on and involves people standing next to a conveyer line picking out materials as it passes in front of them. “Optical sorting machines that can recognize plastic, asphalt shingle or wood, etc., are appearing,” says Turley. “As the material passes, a puff of air blows it off the line to a separating bin. We are also seeing robotic arms in a couple of facilities. It’s in the beginning stages, but I expect it to continue to be more popular. Robotic arms don’t get sick, need a break or have girlfriend problems.”

The Last Word on Sustainability

Any contractor or designer who works with sustainable buildings knows that points in LEED are given for reducing construction waste. Recycling metal building materials is a popular way to earn those points, but often the system, putting it politely, was open to interpretation. “Some recycling facilities would call up and ask what rate the contractor wanted on the LEED form,” says Turley. But working with the U.S. Green Building Council, the industry put together a certification program that certifies recycling facilities. The Recycling Certification Institute provides third-party verification of processes and systems at MRFs. In LEED v4, companies using certified recyclers earn more points. “We had to do it if we were going to make sure the materials are recycled right,” says Turley.