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SustainabilityRecycling

TECHNICAL BULLETIN No. 4 | Version 2 | 10 May 2010

BlueScope Steel Ltd. (BlueScope Steel) has made a commitment to continually improve the company’s environmental footprint and the sustainability of its products and services.

This is the fourth in a series of technical bulletins relating to sustainability issues that directly or indirectly impact the steel value chain. In writing these bulletins BlueScope Steel wishes to inform and educate the market, based on the latest available and verifiable information.

This technical bulletin details the two aspects of steel recycling: recyclability and recycled/recovered content. Steel is 100% recyclable – with no downcycling – and is one of the most recycled materials globally by volume. There are two types of recycled content – post- and pre-consumer – as well as reutilised scrap. The majority of the circa one million tonnes of steel recovered and reused at BlueScope

Steel’s Port Kembla Steelworks every year is classified as reutilised scrap, not recycled content.

BlueScope Steel products have undergone dematerialisation over time – so fewer resources are now required to perform the same function – and can be used effectively in designs for disassembly and reuse. Reuse is perhaps the most preferable form of recycling, as no additional energy is required for reprocessing.

Other technical bulletins in this series related to steel recycling and recyclability course include:

3. Voluntary Green Buildings Ratings Tools in Australia; and

8. Steel in Sustainable Buildings.

1. Recyclability

Recyclability refers to how effectively and efficiently a product or material can be recycled into a new product. Steel is theoretically 100% recyclable: if recovered at the end of each use phase, the life cycle of steel is potentially endless. Recycling prevents the waste of potentially useful materials; reduces consumption of raw materials and energy – thereby reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – compared to virgin production; and reduces pollution.

Recycling must be clearly differentiated from downcycling. Recycling indicates that a material can be recovered and reprocessed into the same material of the same quality again and again, as is the case with steel. Whereas downcycling occurs when a material is recovered, but can only be reprocessed into another material of lesser quality. For example, the recycling of plastics turns them into lower grade plastics.

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Reuse of individual building components can perhaps be considered the most preferable form of recycling, because there is no reprocessing energy whatsoever1: a building component (or entire structure) is simply moved from one location to another.

Steel is also easy to recover from waste streams because of its magnetic properties. This, coupled with its economic value, makes steel the most recycled material in the world by volume2. Globally, over 80% of all scrap steel is captured and is either re-used or recycled3. The Australian Bureau of Statistics4 reports that, in percentage terms, metals have the highest recycling rate of all solid waste generated in Australia, 82%, compared with 74% of concrete waste, 55% of paper waste and 38% of glass waste.

There are two factors that account for the difference between the actual (82%) and potential (100%) recycling rate of steel scrap in Australia: recoverability and human behaviour. As with all recycling, it is a choice whether to send waste to landfill. Even though there are clear economic and environmental benefits of recycling steel, some scrap inevitably ends up in landfills. Logistics also plays a part: for example, in remote locations the cost of transporting equipment to recover building components, and the cost of transporting scrap back to a main

centre for recycling, may be prohibitive. Some treatments, coatings and building practices can also increase the cost and complexity of recycling steel. For example, steel reinforcing in concrete can be difficult to extract due to the concrete crushing equipment required.

2. Recycled Content and Reutilisation

Recycled content denotes the proportion of a product that is generated from post-consumer or pre-consumer material5, and has been used as a benchmark in some green buildings rating tools.

Post-consumer material is generated by end-users (including households, businesses, industries and institutions) from products that can no longer be used for their intended purpose e.g. tin cans, old car bodies and decommissioned building scrap. Post-consumer material also includes the return of material from distribution chains.

Pre-consumer (sometimes also referred to as post-industrial) material is recovered from the manufacturing process before it is sold to end consumers e.g., scrap from a car manufacturer sold back to the steel industry.

Reutilisation of materials such as rework, regrind or scrap within the process that generated them, is not considered pre-consumer material recycling in terms of recycled content. However, recovery of

these materials is still recycling5, because material that would have otherwise become waste is reprocessed and incorporated into new products.

3. The Recycling Process: Steel Production

There are two methods of steel production: Blast Furnace-Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BF-BOS) and Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) production. The BF-BOS process uses virgin material, including iron ore, coke (coal that is crushed, washed and baked to remove impurities) and fluxes, as well as scrap steel. Scrap is added to the BOS vessel to maintain thermal balance. All flat steel products (e.g. automobile panels and roofing and fencing materials) and some long products (e.g. railway tracks) made in Australia are produced through the BF-BOS route. Some long products, e.g. reinforcing materials and rod, are produced using the EAF process too. EAF production requires a high proportion of scrap steel, typically supplemented by small quantities of virgin material. These two production methods mean that steel is one of the only materials in the world to have guaranteed recycled content2,6.

Naturally, there are small process losses in both EAF and BF-BOS steelmaking. It is unavoidable that some iron units in the steelmaking furnace are oxidised during refinement, and float into the slag layer

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steelmaking process, such as Copper, Tin, Chromium, Molybdenum and Nickel. Elevated levels of these impurities can adversely affect mechanical properties, and the surface quality, of the final product. These factors result in the proportion of recovered material in the steel produced in the BF-BOS process by BlueScope Steel in Australia being, on average, 17–20%. Although approximately one million tonnes of scrap steel is used in BlueScope Steel BF-BOS processes per year, the majority of this material is classed as reutilised scrap, not pre-consumer or post-consumer recycled content. Post-consumer material is estimated to comprise 3-3.5%, while pre-consumer material is estimated to be less than 1%.

From a sustainability point of view, the proportion of steel that is recovered for recycling at the end of each use phase is more relevant than the recycled content in any one product at a particular point

in time. Further, if products with post- and/or pre-consumer recycled content beyond that which can be achieved currently in the BF-BOS process are required, and they can not be produced via the EAF route in Australia due to either manufacturing capabilities or the availability of scrap, the product will have to be imported. There are flow-on sustainability effects of such purchasing decisions, including the economic and social costs of forgoing locally produced products, and the economic and environmental costs of transportation.

4. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle

BlueScope Steel not only recovers and recycles steel, but is also engaged in developing innovative ways to reduce and reuse steel, and steelmaking components.

BlueScope Steel has successfully developed high-strength steel products, so that the same function is achieved using fewer raw materials, this is termed dematerialisation. For example, roofing that was once manufactured at 0.55 mm thick, is today made from high-strength COLORBOND® steel 0.42 mm thick – a reduction of 24% without any sacrifice in performance. Steel framing and fencing are also examples of design innovation that maintain functionality with less material use. Some house framing that used to be 1.20-1.60 mm thick is only 0.60-0.75 mm thick today – a saving of 50%. Fencing has also been redesigned so that fence posts and rails that were once predominantly 1.2 mm thick are now commonly only 0.8 mm thick.

Material efficiency has also been increased in the coatings area. A highly

on top of the liquid steel bath. A small percentage of iron units also escape the furnace during charging and oxygen blowing. These are captured in off-gas cleaning systems. At BlueScope Steel’s Port Kembla Steelworks the majority of these materials are recovered and returned to the steelmaking process. However, some of the material cannot be recovered for steelmaking, and is effectively lost from the system. Some of the iron units that cannot be recovered are used by other industries in the place of virgin raw materials.

EAF steel can be produced from up to 100% recovered material. However, EAF production is limited by the worldwide availability of scrap, and is therefore, insufficient to meet market needs. Because steel products generally have a long lifetime, the steel available for recycling into new steel today, was potentially produced over half a century ago. Australia produced approximately four million tonnes of steel in 1960 – current production is over seven million tonnes7, a pattern that is replicated around the world8. Even if all the steel produced in 1960 was currently available to be turned into new steel products, there would still be a significant shortfall in supply. Further, as industrial growth in developing countries continues to accelerate, the need to manufacture steel using virgin material, as well as steel scrap, also escalates.

BF-BOS recycled content proportions may also be limited by the availability of scrap, however, there are also technical limitations. There is a maximum amount of scrap that can be used due to contamination from residual elements, which cannot be removed during the

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Literature Cited

1. Thormark, C. (2002) A low energy building in a life cycle – its embodied energy, energy need for operation and recycling potential. Building and Environment 37. pp 429-435.

2. World Steel Association (2008) 2008 Sustainability Report of the World Steel Industry. World Steel Association, Brussels, Belgium. 34pp.

3. Corus Ltd. (2006) Sustainable steel construction: The design and construction of sustainable buildings. 48pp.

4. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) Australia’s Environment Issues and Trends 2006. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, Australia. 102pp.

5. Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand (2000) AS/NZS ISO 14021:2000 Australian/New Zealand Standard™ Environmental labels and declarations_self-declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labelling) [Modified and including the full text of ISO 14021:1999]. Strathfield, NSW, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand. 32pp.

6. Steel Recycling Institute (2007) 2006 The Inherent Recycled Content of Today’s Steel. Pittsburgh, PA, USA. 2pp.

7. Australian Steel Institute (ASI) (2010) Steel industry economic and statistical data. Last Accessed May 2010. http://www.steel.org.au/inside.asp?ID=393&pnav=393.

8. Strezov, L. and Herbertson, J. (2006) A life cycle perspective on steel building materials. The Crucible Group Pty Ltd. 21pp.

9. The MacArthur Centre for Sustainable Living (2008) Last Accessed July 2008. www.mcsl.org.au

For more information on BlueScope Steel or its products please visit bluescopesteel.com.au or call 1800 022 999.

The information contained in this Bulletin is of a general nature only, and has not been prepared with your specific needs in mind. You should always obtain specialist advice to ensure that any materials, approaches and techniques referred to in this Bulletin meet your specific requirements.BlueScope Steel Limited makes no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or reliability of any estimates, opinions or other information contained in this Bulletin, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, BlueScope Steel Limited disclaims all liability and responsibility for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, which may be suffered by any person acting in reliance on anything contained in or omitted from this document.COLORBOND® and ZINCALUME® are registered trade marks of BlueScope Steel Limited. BlueScope Steel is a registered trade mark of BlueScope Steel Limited.Please ensure you have the current Sustainability Technical Bulletin as displayed at www.bluescopesteel.com.au© 2010 BlueScope Steel Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this Bulletin may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission of BlueScope Steel Limited. BlueScope Steel Limited ABN 16 000 011 058. BlueScope Steel (AIS) Pty Ltd ABN 19 000 019 625.

corrosion resistant aluminium/zinc (AZ) mixture is used to coat some products that were once treated with zinc (Z) alone. Because the AZ coating is lighter (on a volume basis) than a pure zinc coating, the same coating thickness can be achieved using less material. The standard 20 µm thick coating requires approximately 45% less coating material when AZ is used compared to Z alone. This translates to a 75% reduction in the amount of zinc used per square meter of coated steel.

The AZ coating also translates to a yield benefit. For example, when rollformed, a tonne of 0.42 mm AZ coated steel can produce 3.6% more product than a tonne of standard 0.42 mm zinc coated steel. This means that a roof made from 0.42 mm ZINCALUME® steel uses 3.6% less material by mass than a 0.42 mm zinc coated steel roof. The yield improvement is even greater for thinner gauge steel e.g. for 0.3 mm product there is approximately a 5% increase in the usable surface area per tonne.

Further, the increased durability of the AZ coating means that the final product lasts longer. In the majority of typical roofing and walling applications the life of a ZINCALUME® steel product can be up

to four times longer than a product coated with pure zinc of an equivalent thickness.

Steel products can also help achieve better material efficiencies on building sites. Because steel products are precision engineered there is minimal construction waste on-site. Pre-engineering of entire buildings takes this to a new level, and means that the potential of off-cuts being lost to landfill is avoided.

BlueScope Steel products can also be used in designs for disassembly and reuse. These are components of

a building, or entire buildings, that are designed with the intention of reuse not demolition. For example, The MacArthur Centre for Sustainable Living in Mount Annan, NSW, was designed for disassembly using reusable and renewable materials9. The design incorporates whole sheets of steel for the roofing and much of the walling to maximise opportunities for those sheets to be used again in future. Reuse is perhaps the most preferable form of recycling, as no additional energy is required for reprocessing1.

Above: MacArthur Centre for Sustainable Living, Mount Annan, NSW.