recyled content of steel shapes

huangyhg

recyled content of steel shapes
hi everyone,
do any of you have experience with specifying recycled content of steel shapes?  with so much emphasis on green buildings and leed these days, i've been having to specify recycled content percentages in steel shapes in my specifications.  anyone done this before and have a general rule of thumb to follow?  seems to me like it shouldn't really matter as long as the steel still meets the applicable yield and ultimate strength requirements it needs to for astm requirements.
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foreign particles, especially chemically reactive/active.
no specific informations. but from experience of japanese cars built in before 80s, which seemed to use steel made of cheap, dirty recycled scraps for body. their engin last for 15 years or more, while needs new body every 4-5 years. technology may have advanced to take care of this, just watch out.
seg....hitting a hot button here.
as structural engineers, we should not be put in a position to dictate a percentage of recycled material (particularly as a minimum) in anything!  we are structural engineers.  we know the finished properties of the material we use, but we don't need to tell a steel producer how to do his job.  he's responsible for quality control of his products.  he has to meet standards such as a36, a570, etc., all of which were developed long before "green" was popular.
if possible, resist it.  specify that preference will be given to producers who subscribe to "green" processes and develop "green" products, but don't get into telling them how much of anything to put in structural steel.
we are getting into this same nonsense in australia, not only for structural steel, but other components of construction.  the architect says he has to include this kind of thing in the specifications because the state government or commonwealth government require it.  the insane are ruling the asylum.
you can resist specifying it, but it is the reality of the design world right now.  leed allows for the contractor to consider that all steel has a 25% recycled rate without documentation.  this is because the actual recycled rate of steel is higher than that.  in reinforcing i am told that it can be 100%.  on the last leed project i worked on the leed consultant asked that the steel have recycled contents of 100% for reinforcing bar and 80% for all structural steel shapes.  i was the one that put this criteria into the specifications (as i am the one specifying the steel).  it has not been built, but there was not a single question about this that was raised during bidding.  this tells me that either the suppliers don't have a problem with this or it wasn't looked at during the bid.  considering the depth of the bid and the questions that were raised during the process i tend to think that the suppliers don't have a problem meeting these requirements.
who polices this sort of thing?  does the "leed consultant go to the steel mill or to the rolling mill to determine if the requirements are being met?  how would he/she know?
i was under the impression that some of the mills not in mining areas work essentially 100% off scrap.  in which case, you could just specify which mills the material could come out of.
the whole process seems relatively pointless to me, though.  scrap steel has value, and is largely recycled.  if you specify more recycled steel for your project, you're not going to magically generate more scrap into existence.  meaning the same amount of iron ore is going to be mined, only it will be used on someone else's project instead of yours.  that's not exactly a big accomplishment.
oh, and in the process, you're going to use more fuel to haul your "green" steel around the country or the globe.
but js, the people who come up with these silly schemes don't use logic.
h57...my guess is they didn't read the specs.
for rebar, 100% is common, particularly in electric arc furnaces.  for rolled shapes, i would be surprised if 80% is achieved routinely, though it could certainly be.  keep in mind, the higher the percentage of scrap, the more difficult the chemical control of the steel will be.  that's one reason there are essentially no chemical controls on rebar, yet structural shapes have reasonably tight controls on the chemistry.
for my $0.02, i just think such quotas are wrong and generated by people who have no concept of the process, just a political position. as hokie66 pointed out, logic doesn't enter the process.

i am trying to find my notes on this but i believe in the uk that rebar is 100% recycled and regular steel is made up of at least 60% recycled and has been like this for a few years.
in the uk, sustainanability has been on the agenda for quite some time now and is considered an integral part of the design process (along with health and safety considerations). it does make sense to have the engineer involved in these decisions because we do make a difference.
yes the truth is very complicated and often contradictory but we have to start somewhere. when china and india are developed, we will not have enough resources to maintain the current resource usage rates that the western world has enjoyed so far.