Downplaying the environmental impact of sending scrap metal to landfills is a mistake manufacturers should avoid at all costs. The immediate effect is an increase in the cost of doing business since manufacturers must rely on newly mined metals. Unfortunately, it increases the number of mining sites and slows down land reclamation efforts. Recycling scrap metal is vital to mitigating the effects of environmental degradation, which is where scrappers prove indispensable. In addition, scrap metal collection and recycling help keep landfills free of waste. That said, there are different categories of scrap metal, as highlighted in this post.
Home Scrap Metal
The first category is home scrap metal, which refers to the trimmings, shavings, pigged metal and rejects generated during the production of metal products. Home scrap metal is commonly found in metal milling plants. Usually, independent metal collectors cannot access home scrap metals because most milling plants recycle and reprocess them in-house. However, not all home scrap metals, particularly rejects, are useful to metal millers; hence, they discard them. Nonetheless, it does not mean that rejected home scrap metal cannot be recycled into valuable metal. Therefore, you can still collect home scrap metal rejects and sell them to dealers for recycling.
Prompt Scrap
Unlike home scrap metal, prompt scrap is plenty in fabrication shops and manufacturing plants. Notably, prompt scrap metal is the byproduct of fabrication processes during the manufacture of metal products. For instance, leftover metals from automobiles, electronics, sheet metal and other large-scale industrial manufacturing processes qualify as prompt scrap metal. Unlike home scrap metal, prompt scrap is readily available to independent waste metal collectors because manufacturers cannot recycle it in-house. Moreover, the chemical properties of prompt scrap metal are known; hence, sorting is not necessary, making recycling easy and fast.
Obsolete Scrap
The last category is obsolete scrap metal, which most collectors confuse with prompt waste metal. There is a significant difference between the two because obsolete scrap metal is generally recovered from end-of-life products. For instance, scrap metal from old vehicle parts, damaged home appliances and decommissioned water vessels like ships are considered obsolete scrap metals. However, do not let the title 'obsolete' fool you because scrap metals in the category are still useful in many ways despite being recovered from products that have come to the end of service life. Since the chemical properties of obsolete scrap metal are unknown, sorting is crucial before recycling.
Contact a local recycling facility to learn more about scrap metal.
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