How steel scrap is recycled
A shredder can tear a whole car into fist-size chunks, and a magnet picks out the steel.
- stations
- 5
- things upstream
- 5
- raw sources
- 3
- steps from the ground
- 2
The short version
Steel scrap comes from worn-out cars, appliances, buildings and factory offcuts. Yards sort it, then a shredder tears mixed items into small pieces so magnets can pull the steel out of the plastic, copper and aluminum. Electric arc furnaces then melt it, at temperatures that reach 1,800 °C.
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Collect the worn-out steel
Scrap comes from end-of-life vehicles, structural steel, white goods and offcuts left from making new products. Scrapyards usually pay by weight.
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Torch-cut the heavy pieces
Beams, plate and other pieces too big for a shredder are sliced apart with a cutting torch, which burns a fuel gas in pure oxygen and then burns through the steel itself.
Goes in -
Shred the mixed items
Cars and appliances mix steel with plastic, copper, aluminum and brass. A shredder breaks them into small pieces so the metals can be separated mechanically instead of by hand.
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Pull out steel with magnets
Magnets lift the steel away from the rest. Non-magnetic metals go on to separate sorting, and what is left is the shredded steel stream.
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Sort and bale for the mill
Scrap is graded by type and packed into forms a furnace can take. It is sold to mills that melt it into new steel.
Worth repeating
- Mini-mills that melt scrap cost far less to build than integrated mills, around US$140 to 200 per ton of annual capacity against US$1,000.
- An electric arc furnace melts scrap with an arc struck from graphite electrodes, at temperatures up to 1,800 °C.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and steel scrap starts as these 3 raw sources.
Everything it is made of See it on the map
Open the whole family tree
Where it goes next
Steel scrap feeds 4 lines directly and reaches 167 things in total.
Further down the line
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How steel scrap is recycled." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/steel-scrap