Recycled Steel’s New Role In The Transport Of Cleaning Chemicals Could Help Improve The Environment

While the ubiquitous plastic containers that most household products come in are lightweight and cost-effective, environmental scientists are increasingly coming to believe that they impose significant costs on our society and recommend that we begin to pursue alternatives.

For starters, a relatively small proportion of the plastic containers used in the U.S. get recycled. A recent study estimated that less than ten percent of all new plastic gets recycled, and even getting to that low fraction is costly: Sorting the various plastics can be a logistical nightmare for waste management companies and most of the plastic besides No. 1 and No. 2 bottles and jugs go into the landfill.

The energy costs of recycling plastic is significant as well, taking into account the sorting, transport, and the actual process of turning it into new product, which entails the old plastic being shredded, heated, chemically treated, and compressed back into a new resin. What’s more, plastic can only be recycled once or twice before it breaks down and becomes unusable. With recycling rates that low it means that a good deal of the plastic we discard ends up not in a landfill but in the environment, polluting our oceans, parks, and communities.

However, there has recently been a push in some markets to replace plastic containers with metal ones, which can be more cost-effective and also more environmentally friendly. For instance, in the last couple of years a few companies have begun selling water in aluminum cans, which are much more likely to be recycled. Since these containers can be recycled forever—unlike plastic—and the incremental energy needed to recycle aluminum is relatively slight, it means that aluminum producers value used aluminum. As a result, they are willing to pay something to acquire them, which means used cans actually have a monetary value to them. That reality induces consumers, stores, and any entity with people consuming beverages to collect the cans and return them for money.

Recently, a Canadian company called Lainnir Natural Products has developed steel packaging for its line of natural household cleaning products called the Clean Can. The company developed a cost-effective proprietary coating for the Clean Can that allows it to hold water-based cleaning products without rusting the can. The packaging is resealable and is reminiscent of cone-top soda and beer cans of the 1930’s. The company’s intent is for consumers to purchase its cleaning products in the metal Clean Can and then use it to refill an applicator that consumers would use indefinitely.

The recycling rate for steel containers is much greater than that for plastic—the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it is nearly 75 percent—and it also takes significantly less energy to recycle steel than it does plastic, which means less greenhouse gas emissions result from the recycling process.

These days most steel produced in the U.S. is made with electric arc furnaces. Unlike the enormous blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces are not burning coal; instead, they use electricity to melt the scrap steel. The efficiency of recycling steel is making it close to being cost-effective with aluminum, once emissions externalities are taken into account.

In Sweden a new steel plant can produce carbon-free steel by replacing the carbon and coke with green hydrogen, so steel may soon become an even better environmental option.

The Lannier model of a recyclable container and applicator is not original with the company but it may make sense for an increasing number of industries in the coming years, especially as more consumers grow environmentally conscious and start to look for ways to avoid introducing more plastic into the environment.

And as steel production becomes increasingly green, it may become the standard across a host of product categories.