preconsumer recycled content in steel

Usuma—You are correct. The definition of pre-consumer in ISO-14021 does not include materials reclaimed during the same process that generated them. Therefore, a steel mill that collects and reuses scrap within its own mill cannot call that material “recycled.” However, a manufacturer that buys steel to make a product might have leftover material that it sells back to a steel mill. This does qualify as “pre-consumer recycled.” This is common because steel often changes hands several times before it reaches the market. Example: A steel mill rolls molten steel into steel plates. A sheet steel manufacturer buys the plates and rolls them further into coils of sheet steel. Finally, a fabricator buys the coils, cuts the sheet into panels, punches them full of holes, and uses them to make perforated acoustical panels. If a steel mill buys any of the scrap produced by the sheet manufacturer or the panel fabricator, that scrap qualifies as “pre-consumer.”