On August 31, Recyclingportal.eu, the portal for waste disposal, recycling, recycling economy and markets, announced that in 2010 the US scrap recycling industry rebounded more than 40 percent to over $77 billion in sales from $54 billion in 2009, on the basis of information released by the US-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). Despite the global recession which caused a sharp contraction in the US scrap recycling industry in 2009, the domestic scrap recycling industry added 10,000 jobs to the US economy since the beginning of 2010 and now employing approximately 130,000 men and women.
In 2010 commodity grade scrap products were exported from the US to more than 155 countries worldwide, generating nearly $30 billion in export sales and significantly helping the US balance of trade. The United States exported nearly 44 million metric tons of processed scrap materials, consisting of iron and steel, aluminium, nickel and stainless steel, copper, paper, plastics, lead, zinc, rubber and electronics. In the US, 74 million metric tons of ferrous scrap were processed by the scrap recycling industry last year. The US scrap industry then recycled nearly 55 million mt of ferrous metal. The steel produced out of that material predominantly by electric-arc furnaces accounted by approximately 60 percent of the total raw steel production nationwide.
In addition, in 2010 the United States exported ferrous scrap to about 90 countries worldwide, including China, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, Canada and India. The 19 million metric tonnes of iron and steel scrap exports was valued at more than $8 billion. The top exports included 39 percent of shredded steel scrap (7,438,729 mt), nearly 30 percent of No. 1 heavy melting steel (5,646,271 mt), five percent of No. 2 heavy melting steel (1,024,206 mt) and an amount of approximately five percent of stainless steel (937,158 mt) and 4.8 percent of alloyed non-stainless steel (916,105 mt). Meanwhile in 2010, the US scrap industry recycled (domestically) and exported 2 million mt of nickel/stainless steel.