Face it: green is in. This sentiment was proven by a 2015 study conducted by the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), which found that 85% of Americans are accepting of sustainable practices. Moreover, 63% of those survey say that they are increasing their purchase of sustainable products.
In other words, people are no longer just buying—they’re buying with a conscience. As such, whether you’re an architect designing a building’s façade or a design studio crafting your new homeware collection, the materials you use have to be eco-friendly.
An Eco-Friendly Choice
Luckily, alloys such as brass are one of the most sustainable industrial materials in the market. Indeed, most of the brass used today, from the common brass tube to brass sheets, are made from recycled brass. In fact, in countries like the U.K. brass manufacturers use 100% brass scraps.
The reason is that brass is simply costlier to produce from ores than to simply recycle old scraps. As a result, recycled brass is also up to 40% cheaper than newly produced brass. The upside is that the recycled alloys have a smaller ecological impact—instead of using newly mined copper and tin, old brass is simply melted down and reused.
And unlike paper or wood, metals such as brass can be recycled over and over again, because of its unique chemical properties. This is why you should have no fear that recycling brass will have any effect on its suitability for industrial use.
However, sometimes virgin copper (brass’ parent metal), zinc, or other metals may be added to the melted alloy to give it with unique properties. After all, brasses can have different metal ratios that make them suitably for different tasks. Naval brass, for instance, is composed of 59% copper, 40% zinc, and 1% tin.
That being said, once brass has been melted down and imbued with other metals, it can be rolled into tubes, flattened into sheets, and many other products that are suitable for a wide variety of uses.
Conclusion
These days, creating a great product or design is no longer enough. What you create has to be environmentally sound as well, especially as more consumers become more ecologically conscious. If you’re looking for a brass square tube supplier, make sure to ask how they source their alloys and whether their facilities also practices environmentally-friendly procedures.
Sources:
Properties of Brass Metal, ehow.com
Recycling of Copper, copper.org
