Steel Recycling
Harris Steels are committed to maintaining and improving our existing environmental practices by steel recycling. This ranges from the hundreds of tonnes of recyclable scrap steel we produce through processing every year, right down to office consumables.
Our Emphasis in reducing our carbon footprint is concentrated on sourcing Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steel, manufactured in the UK wherever possible and transported over the shortest possible distance from source to customer.
The predominant steel manufacturing methods used globally are EAF and Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) processes. Both by their nature produce greenhouse gases, however EAF produces less than BOF. The EAF process has a very high efficiency of around 95%, with 98% of the finished product derived from recycled scrap steel. By-products like mill scale, dust and lime slag are used in cements and construction aggregates.
In 2015 BOF production accounted for nearly 75% (1.2 billion tonnes) of global crude steel production. UK production contributed just 10.9 million tonnes of crude steel (0.68% of the global total), 1.8 million tonnes of which was produced using EAF. In 2016 nearly 60% of the steel we supplied to customers was made with recycled EAF steel.