Steel is not a product that you typically think of as a problem, but if you have a lot of scrap steel laying around, it can clutter up your work area and create a hazard for people to get hurt on. Cleaning up the scrap may be required by the town, state, or federal agencies that regulate workplace safety as well.

Determining What Needs Removing

Before you begin the cleanup process, you will need to determine what is scrap and what you are holding for later. The difference may be small but it is an important difference to define. If the material has a use in your work, you would have to replace it if you got rid of it, and that could cost you additional money that you would not have had to spend. 

Sort the material out and find a place to store the materials you want to keep. You can then make piles of scrap or place it in a container that can be easily hauled away once the sorting is complete. Keep in mind, some scrap recyclers will want you to sort the clean metal from the dirty metal as well. The difference is clean metal is pure and dirty is mixed with other metals so if you have aluminum that had steel rivets in it, the recycler would consider it dirty metal. 

Working with a Recycler

Contact an industrial scrap metal cleanup company and ask about having material picked up from your business and hauled to their facility. If they will haul it for you, it can save a lot of time for you, but talk to the recycler about the price they will pay for the material. They may take a percentage of the price off the top for hauling the load, but even if that is the case, you will still make money on the scrap that was just piled up collecting dust.

Recurring Recycling 

For companies that produce large quantities of scrap materials, you may want to talk to the recycler about setting up a recurring pickup to haul off the material. If you have a lot of scrap, you may need a weekly pickup or maybe you only need a pickup once a month. The recycler can often tailor the schedule to fit your needs as well as theirs. If they do not have pickup service available, you can hire a transport company to take your scrap steel into the recycler for you.