Steel being considered as ‘green’ product
BOISE, Idaho — Steel is one of the most recycled materials on the planet; it can be melted down and 100-percent reused.
So steel is starting to be talked about — especially among those in the steel industry — as a green product. The topic came up on National Steel Day in September, as construction-industry professionals gathered at Rule Steel in Caldwell, Idaho.
There, as the 73 attendees toured the steel fabrication plant, organizers touted the green benefits of using steel in new buildings.
“Even in the fabrication process, one of the things Rule Steel explained to everyone was that … any scrap they have missed, it’s all melted right back down,” said Deborah Olson of Boise-based Lochsa Engineering, which helped organize the event. “There aren’t any byproducts or anything; it’s all melted down or reused. So that’s one of the big things about it. With lumber you have a bunch of scrap material, or concrete you can’t melt it down — but with steel you reuse all of it.”
Green experts say steel is valuable when it comes to recycling and reuse. When no recycled content information is available about any given piece of steel, the U.S. Green Building Council instructs builders to assume it is made of 25 percent post-consumer recycled content. But carbon emissions during production could be a concern.
The carbon footprint is something that’s been discussed on a national level. For example, one study published in 2001 by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory pointed out that steel production made up 5 to 15 percent of total country carbon emissions in developing countries such as Brazil, India and China.
That high number comes from the outdated, inefficient technologies that were still used in those countries to produce steel. The study found that it would be possible to reduce the energy used to produce steel in those countries by 33 to 49 percent.
The American Institute of Steel Construction has been trying to counter the impression that steel production has high carbon emissions.
One thing the organization points out is that one ton of steel goes about 10 times farther than one ton of concrete, for example. So the carbon emitted in the production of a ton of steel cannot be reasonably compared to the carbon emitted in the production of a ton of concrete or other materials.
The institute also points out that since 1990, the steel manufacturing industry has decreased its carbon footprint per ton by 47 percent. And research is under way to develop methods of steel production that reach carbon neutrality, though that goal is a long way down the road.
