What are Ferrous Metals?
From all the metals you can recycle, ferrous metals are the least popular. Ferrous metals include Iron and could be called an Alloy which is a mix of two metals. In the case of ferrous metals they are liable to rust and are magnetic too.
If a piece of metal is rusted it would definitely be ferrous metal but it would be stronger and that is the reason why Iron is mixed with another to provide that extra strength.
Wrought iron, stainless steel, cast iron and carbon steel are some of the metals added to provide extra strength especially in the manufacture of machinery.
On the other hand non-ferrous metals would be brass, aluminum, copper, tin, nickel, lead, zinc, gold, silver, and other similar metals in its single form with being mixed or added with another.
Gold is used for jewelry due to its ability to with stand rust and also the luster and value and which too has to be mixed with a percentage of copper to add strength to it so that it is strong enough to be made into jewelry.
Separation
Ferrous metals are separated from other metals by using its magnetic properties and then recycled to be reused again and again and in the year 2008 the world recycled 1.3 billion tons of steel was produced and of that 500 million tons were recycled scrap metal.
The scrap metal industry is highly dependent on scrap metal which is a very large industry around the world and is a billion dollar business.
Apart from the recycling part if all these scrap metal was lying around after use and is not reused that would be quite a lot of junk the world would have to contend with.
After the Second World War came to an end in Europe alone there were tons and tons of metal from the thousands of bombs that were dropped lying around and this gave the impetus for this industry to kick start and become what it is today, but there has been a slump in recent years due to many factors.
For scrap metal to be in demand the economy too plays an important part as both are correlated and when one does well the other follows.
The world needs ferrous metals to be recycled and reused and though in its raw form aluminum and other metals are recycled it is important that we reuse whatever we could and it also has a direct impact on the environments in two ways.
One we would be extracting less iron in its raw form and other metals for use and also getting rid and cleaning up the world by recycling ferrous metals which could cause immense damage to the environment especially to the water tables eventually in many years to come.
Hence we should encourage the recycling of every possible material and ensure that we leave a safer world for the generations that follow or we could leave a highly polluted world which would not last even a few generations to come.