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Breaks my heart to see such useable material going in the bin but of course, whatever profit there may be in it, would be diluted several times over depending how many people are involved from one end of the company to the other.
The other issue is of course, a productive company is going to generate this relatively tiny amount of waste by getting through a gigantic amount of material. If they were to spend time sorting it or storing it, the sheer logistics of managing the constant flow of offcuts would be horrendously inefficient and expensive...
For one guy working out of his own shed, that's a goldmine. So forgive me for being pleased with myself for amassing several tons of rebar, and steels or hoarding a massive pile of used 4x2s. I do enjoy rubbing shoulders with the professionals on here; the welders and fabricators. I learn something new every time I visit. Every time seriously.
But I'm just one man and his shed trying to scratch a living and have a bit of fun, do a bit of restoration work and recycle everything within arms reach. Save the planet one pile of scrap at a time. I'm not sure if this is a rant, I guess I have seen too many "I lob stuff like that in a skip" comments on my posts recently. If it is a rant, it's over. Thanks for watching...
Exactly that - what you see is probably a weeks scrap - scrap is about 8-10% of what we produce - pretty good. When internal space and yard space is rented and rates are paid on it etc, the cost to store this would be huge - well outweighing its value. Consider also that this material has already been paid for by a customer, so effectively we are just getting paid to get rid of our rubbish.
With CE Marking we would have to log a lot of the off cuts, allocate certificates etc which would take time and more money.
When we order the steel for a job, someone would then have to go out, find what off cuts we have, then amend the order. More time and money.
It is a shame to skip it, and I would love to keep everything but I have to have a sensible business head on. We have a big 'Christmas tree' rack with long offcuts on that is always loaded to the hilt for any emergency jobs.