Steel Drum Recycling

Reconditioning

• The steel drum's great advantage, both in terms of cost and in terms of environmental impact, is its reusability. Steel is extremely durable and corrosion-resistant, and steel drums can be reused many times before being recycled.

  Steel drums are unique among shipping containers in that reconditioned steel drums can meet the same requirements as new steel drums. An entire reconditioning industry has grown to process used steel drums and make them like-new. Reconditioning often begins with flame-cleaning, which removes all paint and marking from the outside and content residue from the inside. This is followed by an extensive washing before the drums are checked, re-painted and finished.

Recycling

• Steel drums can be reused many times, but they do eventually need to be recycled. The drum is cleaned thoroughly to remove any residue on the inside and paint on the outside. Then the empty drums are crushed and sent to the scrapyard, where they are mixed with other grades of steel.

  Steel has a number of properties that make it an efficient metal to recycle. It is magnetic, which allows steel to be easily separated from other metals in the scrapyard. Making new steel requires a certain amount of recycled steel, so an all-new steel drum will be at minimum 25 percent recycled. Steel also retains all its properties through the recycling process, with no degradation -- so recycling steel drums can be a never-ending process.

The Recycling Process

• The recycling process for steel drums begins in the scrapyard, where magnets are used to separate steel from other metals. The steel is then sorted and melted in electric arc furnaces. The molten steel is then poured into ingots, which are rolled into sheets after they cool. The resulting steel sheets are then formed into new drums, and the process begins again.

Steelpans

• The most famous example of steel drum recycling requires only a hammer and some drumsticks. In the late 1940s, Trinidadian musicians invented the steelpan or steel kettle drum, a chromatic percussion instrument made from a steel drum.

  An empty drum is turned upside-down, and the bottom is hammered until smooth and concave. Oval areas are flattened in the curved skin to create notes of exact pitches, and the resulting steelpan is played like a drum. The first Trinidadian steelpan drummers were pioneer recyclers, even if they didn't know it!