• Iron and steel are the world's most recycled materials and among the easiest materials to recprocess. This is due to the ability to incorporate magnets in the waste stream separation process.
    • 42% of crude steel is made from recycled material.
    • The aluminum can is the most recycled consumer product in the United States.
    • The aluminum beverage can industry uses more aluminum than any other industry.         
    • Roughly 70% of all metal is used only once and then thrown away.  The remaining 30% is recycled.  After 5 cycles only .25% (one quarter of one percent) of the original metal remains in circulation.

      All American Recycling Corp. performs a quality inspection overview on the scrap metal it receives; to make sure the sorting agent has correctly separated the types of metals. After the inspection, the metal is heated by a smelter, a device capable of melting large objects at very high temperatures. The different types of metals go through different smelters, because each metal has a different melting point (for example, aluminum melts at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, steel melts at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Once the metals are fully molten, they are molded into small bars called ingots and are allowed to cool.

      The ingots are distributed to manufacturers and re-melted to become made into different products. Some popular uses for recycled metals are aluminum cans (for soft drinks), office products (filing cabinets, storage racks), and household products (canned foods, metal furnishing). In recent years, steel from old automobiles has even been used in conjunction with new steel to manufacture new automobiles.