How to recycle stainless steel

For domestic users, stainless steel can be easily recycled through existing kerbside collections and municipal recycling centres. Many domestic applications of stainless steel will use lower cost ferritic grades, which can be separated from the waste stream along with regular carbon steel due to their magnetic nature.

However, due to the presence of expensive alloying elements, particularly nickel, but also chromium, stainless steel has an inherent value far greater than ordinary scrap steel. Therefore, industrial processors, fabricators and machinists can make use of commercial services to recycle their stainless steel arisings and retain more of their value. This steel will be re-directed to foundries and larger steel producers to make new stainless steel products. In such cases, great care is taken to segregate different grades of stainless steel at the point of arising to allow more ready re-use.