Home Scrap

I haven't encountered this term, but is the product rebar? In our area Nucor collects local scrap metal to use in rebar. That scrap counts for MR4 as post consumer and often for MR5 as local. However, our suppliers don't call it out separately for MR4 but include it in post consumer. Can you get clarification from the supplier on what they mean by home scrap since they aren't including it in either category?

That 'home scrap' sounds suspicously like reclaimed manufacturing waste to me. If they are taking the excess steel from making the item and remelts that steel to make the same item it does not contain recycled content as rewarded in the LEED process. See page 371 of the Reference Guide and ask the supplier about their process.

Hmm, I posted a comment a few days ago about this and it failed to post.

I read the requirement to exclude home scrap in the ISO standard as only involving the part of the home scrap that originated from new raw materials. This is obviously what standard does not want, new raw materials being reused and claimed as recycled content.

If the incoming raw materials to the plant are 20% post consumer, 25% post industrial, and 55% new raw materials. Then the LEED recycled content is 20% and 25%.

Consider, if a product is made from 50% recycled content and 50% new raw materials, and the manufacturing process results in 10% scrap feed back into the process, then the scrap has the same recycled content as the source raw materials.

The recycled content is still there. ISO 14021 states for Pre-Consumer definition, "Excluded is reutilization of materials such as rework, regrind or scrap generated in a process and capable of being reclaimed within the same process that generated it." This statement does not exist in the Post-consumer definition.

Thanks for explaining this so clearly, Hernando and Susan! I totally agree with both of you.Home scrap in metals manufacturering should NOT be included in recycled content.