Scrap Metal Blog

You'll find tips to identify and sort your scrap metal, best practices for managing and disposing of your scrap, and insights from scrap metal professionals with 90 years of experience.

What Happens to Scrap Metal After It’s Recycled?

When you take your scrap metal to the scrap yard or call to have it picked up by your metals recycling partner, what happens next? Is it sorted in a giant machine or is it shipped out? What about after it’s sorted – is it melted down right there? What if there are impurities in the metal?

Now that your part is done, let’s take a good look at what happens once your scrap metal has been recycled.

Scrap Metal Recycling

After your scrap metal leaves your shop, it goes through the process for reclamation. The process involved can be different based on the type of metal involved, but here’s a basic layout of what happens to your scrap metal once you’re done with it.

  1. You’re familiar with the first step already – you drop off or arrange pickup of your scrap metal, which is then sorted and weighed. After this point, you receive payment for your metals and your part of the process is complete. That was easy, wasn’t it!
  2. Once the scrap yard has a full load of a particular metal, they make arrangements to get it delivered to a smelter or metals furnace. At the smelter or furnace, high temperature is applied to melt the metal, typically several thousand degrees F. This can also include different alloys being melted on their own or as a mix of recycled scrap metals to achieve the right mix. A smelter can handle a single metal or a variety of metals depending on their operation.
  3. After the metals have been melted down into a liquid state, they’re poured into molds to create ingots, which is a small bar or brick of solid metal. These ingots are sold to other companies who will put them to use on their production lines.
  4. After the ingots have been sent out to the manufacturing plant, the plant will put the ingots into their production line where they’ll be re-melted so they can be turned back into a wide variety of products.  From sheet metal to piping and wires you can use in your company’s production line to food containers, as well as cars and furniture purchased by the average consumer, recycled scrap metal has a lot of uses.

Environmental Benefits

Recycling your scrap metal means that your waste products come full circle to become new materials and products all over again.

Though the process of recycling metals can be complicated, your part in preserving our environment and improving your business’ overhead through scrap metal sales is easy – just sort, clean and sell for the best possible outcome from your scrap metal program.

With today’s demand for green products, recycling scrap metal makes great business sense.

To set up a scrap metal recycling program for your business, please contact Feigenbaum & Nair Scrap Metal Processing. We’re always happy to help companies achieve their best business goals through long-lasting relationships and environmental stewardship.

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