FREE RESOURCE · SUSTAINABILITY

Environmental Savings Calculator

Every pound of used, repaired, or recycled rack is a pound of new steel that never has to be made. Enter your project below to see what that's worth in steel, carbon, and water, the same math behind the 50,000+ tons AMH reconditions and recycles every year.

Run the Calculator → See Used Rack Inventory

Interactive Estimator

What your project keeps out of the furnace

Used rack, RACKCYCLE repairs, and sell-back recycling all divert steel one-for-one from new production. Enter any combination below.

Your Project

Inputs

Used rack purchased (lbs) Rule of thumb: a single-deep selective bay runs roughly 300–500 lbs of steel. RACKCYCLE repair kits installed (count) Each kit avoids replacing a full upright, we count the kit's own recycled steel at ~35 lbs. Rack recycled or sold back (lbs) Decommission and liquidation material that reenters the supply chain instead of scrap-melting as waste.

Your Impact

Live

lbs of new steel production avoided

,lbs of CO2e avoided

,gallons of steelmaking water use avoided

,passenger cars off the road for a year (equivalent)

,tree seedlings grown for 10 years (equivalent)

Illustrative estimate, not a certified life-cycle assessment. Figures use industry-average steelmaking intensities (worldsteel) and EPA greenhouse-gas equivalencies, detailed in how these numbers are calculated below. Ask us for project-specific figures with your quote.

How these numbers are calculated +

This estimator translates reused, repaired, and recycled steel into an environmental footprint using published industry averages. It is a planning and awareness tool, not a certified life-cycle assessment (LCA). The premise is one-for-one displacement: a pound of sound used rack put back into service is a pound of new steel that does not have to be produced. The figures below represent the embodied footprint of producing that equivalent new steel.

CO₂e	1.85 lb CO₂e per lb of crude steel — worldsteel global-average CO₂ intensity (~1.85 tonnes per tonne).
Water	3.4 gal per lb of steel — worldsteel average freshwater withdrawal in steelmaking (~28.6 m³ per tonne). Withdrawal, not net consumption.
Cars	10,141 lb CO₂e per car per year — U.S. EPA greenhouse-gas equivalency (4.60 metric tons per typical passenger vehicle, annually).
Seedlings	132 lb CO₂e per seedling — U.S. EPA equivalency (0.060 metric tons per tree seedling grown for 10 years).
Repair kit	~35 lb of recycled steel per RACKCYCLE kit — an AMH working assumption, not a published average.

Why this is conservative and defensible: we credit only the average embodied footprint of the steel itself, not downstream transport, fabrication, or coating, and we present equivalencies (cars, trees) exactly as EPA defines them. Actual savings vary with steel source, process route, and how far the material travels. For project-specific numbers, ask for them with your quote.

Why It Matters

The economical choice and the environmental one are the same choice

Steel is one of the most energy-intensive materials on earth to produce, and one of the most reusable. Properly inspected used rack carries the same load ratings as new, RACKCYCLE repair kits are manufactured from recycled steel, and decommissioned systems reenter the market instead of the landfill. That's not a marketing position; it's how our business has worked since 1979.

50K+tons of steel reconditioned & recycled annually by AMH (100M+ lbs)

1:1every pound of used or repaired rack is a pound of new production avoided

Up to 80%typical repair savings vs. replacement, the budget and the footprint shrink together

ESG-readydocumented diversion figures you can hand to your sustainability team

Environmental Savings Calculator

What your project keeps out of the furnace

Your Project

Your Impact

The economical choice and the environmental one are the same choice

Want these numbers on your next quote?