A review of steel recycling can take someone in many directions as we are about to see with this review. But it seems the one overarching theme of the articles reviewed is that of conservation raw materials and conservation of the earth by reducing the amount of waste we put in our landfills. We start our review of steel recycling with the Army. 1) A discussion of decontamination. 2) How steel recycling creates a need for Engineers. 3) How recycling steel from old buildings influences Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). 4) Recycling steel uses less raw materials, therefore using less natural resources and producing less air pollutants.
The Army’s Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) has a new method to recycling material (steel) that may have not been able to have been because of contamination from exploded chemical weapons. The (CMA) developed a magnetic induction heating process to decontaminate these 1600-lb containers (ton containers or TC’s)(U.S. Army, 2011). Gottschalk said, “The decision to decontaminate these legacy containers using magnetic induction heating made the recycling of the containers possible”. And with this process cleaning over 4000 of these devices for recycling at the time of the article, that is a lot of landfill space that can be used by, unfortunately unrecyclable materials that have to go somewhere.
Just slightly more than a quarter of what Americans throw away each year is recycled and a lot more than that is very recyclable. However, when it comes to steel, over 50 percent of the steel production over the past 50 years, has been through the recycling process (Cantu, 2011). So how is this possible? Through education about the recycling processes and through Civics courses while children are in school and community projects to clean up neighborhoods. Hopefully this will get high school and college students interested in becoming member of the engineering field, because currently the steel-making field is suffering a decline in engineering disciplines that are essential to the growth of the industry (Cantu, 2011).
The earth will eventually run out of resources, what are we doing to slow this process down. In his work Gorgolewski argues a study by Bundtland (1994), saying “the Earth can sustain a small human population consuming and polluting to Western levels or a larger number with a far more ecologically appropriate lifestyle. But it cannot absorb 7 or 8 billion people all wishing to have a Western lifestyle”. Hopefully through recycling and reuse of materials from the demolition of old building can lead to a lower environmental impact (Gorgolewski, 2006). Also the LEED Green Building Rating System has provided a framework for informing building design and construction decision-making (Gorgolewski, 2006). Through these processes cities can reduce Green House Gasses and reduce the use of raw materials allowing the world to be sustainable for many years to come.
The Environmental Protection Agency states “that it estimates that in 2005, 79 million tons of waste was recycled – an increase of 64 million tons since 1980”. If you were to include automobiles and structural steel that number would be much larger. It therefore can be construed that the efforts of community organizers and environmentalists have had an impact on recycling and the amount of waste we are not putting in our landfills. The author explains how recycling more uses less raw materials, but also states that by recycling, especially steel, that the process uses less coal and coke for the steel making process, creating less air pollutants (Childress, 2008). While some people will tell you that coal is good for the country because it is plentiful, sometimes less is more.

References
Anonymous. (2011, Sep). Army green: Project recycles 6 million pounds of steel. Professional Safety, 56(9), 22.
Cantu, D. (2011, Sep). From trash to treasure: Recycling scrap metal into steel. Technology & Engineering Teacher, 71(1), 14-21.
Childress, V. W. (2008, Feb). Scrap Metal Recycling. Technology Teacher, 67(5), 13-17.
Gorgolewski, M. (2006, Apr). The implications of reuse and recycling for the design of steel buildings1. Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 33(4), 489-496.