A few months back, I sat across from a small workshop owner in Ohio, watching him toss a stack of worn hydraulic pumps into a dumpster. “They’re metal, right? Should just melt ’em down,” he said. But when I pulled out the dented gear from the back of my truck—one of the exact same models I’d supplied him three years prior—I saw something he hadn’t: the tiny microchips embedded in the pump’s control module, the corrosion-resistant coatings on its pistons, the rubber seals that weren’t as easy to reprocess as raw steel. That moment is what made me stop asking if industrial parts can be recycled and start asking how. As someone who’s run an industrial parts supply business for 17 years, I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit talking to scrap yards, metallurgists, and plant managers about this exact question—and the short answer isn’t a simple yes or no. It’s it depends. Industrial Parts
Let’s start with the part everyone gets right: ferrous metals. The steel and iron that make up 60-70% of most industrial parts are the easiest to recycle, and we’ve been doing it for decades. When a motor shaft or a pump housing reaches the end of its service life, it goes to a scrap processing facility, where it’s sorted by magnet (ferrous sticks, non-ferrous like aluminum or copper don’t), shredded into fist-sized chunks, and fed into a furnace. The American Iron and Steel Institute says that steel made from recycled scrap uses 75% less energy than steel made from virgin ore, cuts carbon emissions by 25%, and generates far less waste. Last year, my team helped a mid-sized manufacturing plant in Indiana collect 12 tons of old gearboxes that would’ve been sent to a landfill; we worked with a local processor to turn those gearboxes into new raw steel, which the plant used to make replacement parts for its assembly lines. That’s the win people talk about when they say industrial parts are recyclable.
But here’s where the rubber hits the road—pun intended—because not all parts are just steel. Take non-ferrous metals: copper wiring in motors, aluminum heat exchangers, brass fittings. These are valuable, but they require different processing. Last quarter, a client of mine, a food processing plant, had to replace 40 old centrifugal pumps. When we told them we could arrange for the old ones to be recycled, they were thrilled—until they realized the copper wiring inside the pumps was worth enough to cover half the cost of the recycling service. The problem is that mixed non-ferrous metals (like copper and aluminum stuck together) are harder to sell than sorted batches, so scrap yards charge for processing. We learned that the hard way in 2019, when we tried to recycle a batch of old valve bodies that had copper fittings attached; the processor charged us $0.25 a pound to separate them, eating into the savings we thought we’d get.
Then there are the parts that most people assume are recyclable but aren’t—at least not yet. Let’s talk about coated components: the corrosion-resistant zinc plating on fasteners, the PTFE coatings on industrial valves that keep them from sticking, the ceramic insulators on electrical parts. When we worked with a chemical plant in Texas a few years back, they had to replace a set of 200 coated pipe fittings. We thought recycling them would be straightforward, but when we sent them to a metallurgist, we learned the zinc coating would contaminate the steel melt if not removed—and removing it requires a chemical process that’s still too expensive for most small to mid-sized businesses. The PTFE coating, meanwhile, can’t be melted down without releasing toxic fumes, so it has to be stripped off manually, a process that’s not worth the labor cost for a single batch of fittings.
The biggest curveball, though, is the integrated parts that make modern industrial systems work. Think about it: a single industrial pump isn’t just metal. It has a microcontroller with tiny printed circuit boards (PCBs), sensors, rubber seals, plastic housings, and lithium-based batteries for backup power. Most scrap yards don’t have the equipment to safely dismantle these parts to recover the valuable metals inside (gold, silver, copper) without exposing workers to toxic materials like lead and mercury. A few years ago, I picked up a batch of old motor controllers from a automotive parts plant, and when I sent them to a local e-waste recycler, they told me that only 30% of the parts could be processed safely—the rest had to go to a landfill because they contained materials that can’t be recycled yet.
That’s not to say the future isn’t bright, though. In the last five years, we’ve seen huge advances in industrial parts recycling technology. A metallurgy lab in Michigan recently developed a process that can remove zinc coatings from steel parts using a non-toxic, water-based solution, cutting contamination risks by 90% and processing costs by 40%. Another company in Sweden has created a robotic system that can dismantle PCBs from motor controllers, recover 95% of the valuable metals, and safely dispose of the remaining materials, all for a fraction of the old labor cost. At my business, we’ve already started partnering with that lab to offer our clients a “closed-loop” recycling program: when a part we supply reaches the end of its life, we pick it up, send it to the processor, and use the recovered metals to make new parts. Last year, we did this for 15 clients, and one of them saved $12,000 in new part costs by using the recycled steel from their old gearboxes.
But here’s the thing that took me a long time to realize: recycling isn’t just about what happens after a part is thrown away—it’s about what we build into the part from the start. When we design the industrial parts we sell, we can make them easier to recycle by using fewer mixed materials, adding traceability markers that let scrap yards sort them faster, and using coatings that don’t contaminate metal melts. A few years ago, we switched all our fasteners from zinc plating to a new, non-toxic ceramic coating that’s easy to strip and doesn’t pollute steel melts. It cost us 10% more upfront, but last year, when we recycled a batch of 5,000 fasteners, we didn’t pay a processing fee—we even got a small credit for the clean steel. That’s a win for everyone: our clients pay less for disposal, we reduce our environmental footprint, and the scrap yards don’t have to deal with contaminated materials.
I’ll be honest, though—there’s still a lot of work to do. Last month, a plant manager in Pennsylvania asked me if we could recycle a set of old hydraulic hoses, and when I checked with the processors, I learned that most rubber-based industrial parts are still sent to landfills. The only way to recycle them is to grind them up and use them as fuel in cement kilns, which is better than dumping, but not perfect. We’re now working with a materials company in Germany to test a new type of industrial hose made from recycled rubber that can be melted down and reused in new parts, and we’re hoping to launch it next year. That’s the kind of small, steady change that moves the needle on industrial recycling.
So, circling back to that first conversation with the Ohio workshop owner. A year later, I went back to see him, and he still had that dented hydraulic pump sitting in his back room. He told me he’d tried to take it to a scrap yard, but they turned him away because it had a microchip inside. We offered to pick it up, process it through our closed-loop program, and give him a credit on his next order. Last week, he texted me a photo of his new pump—made in part from the steel and copper in that old one—sitting on his shop floor. “I used to think recycling was for bottles and cans,” he said. “Now I know it’s for the parts that keep my business running.”
That’s the point I want every client to understand: industrial parts can be recycled, but it takes more than just tossing them in a dumpster. It takes planning, the right partners, and a willingness to design parts with recycling in mind. As someone who’s been in this industry for almost two decades, I’ve seen too many plants throw away perfectly good metal because they didn’t know how to recycle their old parts—and I’ve seen too many businesses save thousands of dollars by working with a supplier that can handle end-of-life parts. If you’re a plant manager, a maintenance lead, or a business owner who’s tired of paying for unnecessary landfill fees, or if you want to cut your carbon footprint without sacrificing part quality, let’s talk. We can help you design parts that are easier to recycle, set up a closed-loop program for your old components, and find solutions for the parts that seem too tricky to process. Recycling isn’t just a buzzword for our business—it’s how we keep parts affordable, keep waste out of landfills, and keep the industrial sector moving forward.
Hardware Accessories References:
American Iron and Steel Institute. (2023). Recycling Benefits of Steel. AISI Publications.
International Organization for Standardization. (2022). ISO 14001: Environmental Management Systems for Industrial Part Manufacturing. ISO Standards.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). Industrial Recycling and Waste Reduction Guidelines. EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery.
Swedish Metal Recycling Association. (2023). Advanced Dismantling Technologies for Electronic Industrial Components. SMRA Technical Report.
Suzhou Ruchun Machinery Technology Co., Ltd.
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