Regional Steel

Did you claim that the steel was 99% regional (and not 100%)? Otherwise I don't see why the GBCI asked for the 1% iron ore extraction point... For the projects we worked on, we never had problems claiming recycled steel as regional providing that the steel scrap is recovered and processed within 500 miles of the project site

Chris, my assumption is that they rejected it because you claimed 100% as the regional material percentage when you should have claimed 99%. Does this sound plausible?

This also leads to a question I have regarding the calculation of the regional value of steel. Lately, I have seen project specific letters from steel mills which state what percentage of their scrap steel is regional. For instance: "90% of the recovered/scrap steel was harvested within 500 miles of your project site." I think these letters are great, I am just wondering how to claim the regional percentage in these cases.

For instance with a steel product that contains 85% recycled content (70 post-consumer and 15 pre-consumer). If I receive a letter with the above language from the mill, am I claiming 90% as my RM value or 76% (85% x 90%)?

In the past, when we've pushed back on manufacturers to describe that sort of a statement (90% of recovered/scrap is regional..."), they've always come back saying that they are only willing to report/track the recycled/salvaged material and not the raw materials, simply due to the fact that the percentage of raw materials is so low for most steel products that it's not cost-effective for them to track on a per-product basis.

So in instances like your example, we'd claim an overall regional material for the product of 76.50% (85.00% recycled/recovered x 90.00% regional recovered). We haven't had that be rejected in a review, however, we have heard of projects getting products rejected when they claim the 90% regional if the letter only actually speaks to the locations of the scrap.

Hope that helps!

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Kristina. It helps a lot. I agree with the method you use to derive the regional percentage since the manufacturer's language speaks only to the recovered steel, and this is how I typically document it. Thus far, however, I have not received an official review on this type of documentation. Sometimes other members of the project team question this calculation and so it's good to know of others having success documenting it this way.

Chris, Marcia, Khristine - My recommendation is to follow the calculation outlined above by Marcia and Kristine. It's correct that for many steel products produced in North America and destine for a construction project, tracking the virgin materials isn't worth the effort. For example, 100% of the rebar and 100% of the structural steel produced in North America are made from virtually (99%+/-) recycled content and in EAF furnaces. What's not scrap are alloy's and other minor components. Plate and sheet products however can be a wide mixture of scrap vs virgin depending on the producer and process.

Likewise, ANY imported steel product can be any ratio of scrap vs. virgin and can be made using any type of process. This can have a dramatic difference in the environmental footprint of the steel material/product. Never assume just because you bought it in North America that it was made in North America. Spell it out in the specs.

In terms of LEED documentation for most steel products, only expect to see claims referring to the recycled content percentage. At that point it is important to mulitply the recycled content times the regional percentage to caclulate the percentage of the total product cost that is applicable.