The manufactures that supplied the steel for my job all have some form of the following line in their support documentation for the recycled content:
The Manufacture...utilizes the Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) process to manufacture a variety of steel products. Based on studies conducted by the Steel Recycling Institute (www.recycle-steel.org) and supported by...the Manufacture's... internal operating data, the steel products manufactured with BOF technology in the United States in 2009, which is the most recent data available, consume approximately 34.9% recycled scrap with 24.3% post-consumer scrap, 9.4% pre-consumer scrap and 1.2% in-house scrap.
The reviewer has said this type of documentation is not allowed as it references national or industry averages. Should the manufactures not reference the Steel recycling institute in there supporting documentation? Do we need a letter that just states "the steel used on your project has x% recycled content"? I am just a bit confused on what is acceptable for documenting the manufactures recycled content claims. Thanks!
RETIRED
LEEDuser Expert
623 thumbs up
April 14, 2014 - 12:19 pm
Todd - This can be confusing. Please see "The manufacturer can't give me product-specific recycled content data, but they say that they fall within the national industry average. Can I use that?" FAQ above for background information including the actual LI - http://www.usgbc.org/leed-interpretations?keys=10246.
To answer your questions, referencing the Steel Recycling Institute is not useful for supporting documentation because it is not specific to the manufacturer. Basically, yes, you do need specific information from your manufacturer, which could be a letter from the manufacturer stating the amount of recycled content. If you can’t provide specific information, you can fall back to the default 25% post-consumer waste value without any additional backup. See “Is the default average recycled content value of 25% for steel still allowed?” still allowed.