Calculate the Recycled Content of any product or material blend from the actual masses of recycled and virgin feedstocks. Results update live as you type — and every session stays in your browser, never on a server.
Recycled Content (RC) is a direct mass-based measure of the fraction of a product's material inputs that originate from recycled sources. A higher RC indicates reduced reliance on virgin (primary) raw materials, lower resource depletion, and — in many cases — reduced energy consumption and emissions associated with primary extraction and processing. RC is directly related to Green Chemistry Principle 7 (Use of Renewable Feedstocks) and is a key metric in circular economy frameworks, ISO standards, and life-cycle assessment.
| Symbol | Term | Units |
|---|---|---|
| \(RC\) | Recycled Content | % (dimensionless; ideal value = 100%) |
| \(m_{\text{recycled}}\) | Total mass of all material inputs from recycled (post-consumer or post-industrial) sources | g (or kg) |
| \(m_{\text{total}}\) | Total mass of all material inputs (recycled + virgin + bio-based) | g (or kg) |
A material is "recycled" if it was recovered from waste streams (post-consumer: from end-of-life products; or post-industrial: manufacturing offcuts and process scrap) and reprocessed for use as a feedstock. Virgin materials are newly extracted or synthesised from primary resources. Bio-based materials (from renewable biological sources) are tracked separately here.
| Sector / Application | Typical RC | Key driver |
|---|---|---|
| Aluminium production (recycled scrap) | 70–80% | Energy savings vs. primary smelting (~95% lower) |
| Paper and cardboard | 50–70% | Extensive post-consumer fibre collection infrastructure |
| Steel (electric arc furnace route) | 90–100% | Scrap-fed EAF displaces virgin iron ore and coke |
| Plastics (consumer goods) | 5–30% | Sorting, contamination, and downcycling challenges |
| Specialty / fine chemicals | 0–10% | Purity requirements limit use of recycled feedstocks |
| Type | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Post-consumer (PCR) | Material recovered from products that have completed their useful life and been discarded by end users | Recycled PET bottles → new fibres or packaging |
| Post-industrial (PIR) | Manufacturing waste or off-specification material redirected from its own or another production process | Metal filings → secondary smelting feedstock |
| Bio-based | From renewable biological sources — distinct from recycled but tracked alongside for a complete feedstock picture | Corn-derived PLA, bio-ethanol |
Enter all material inputs to the product: recycled (post-consumer or post-industrial), bio-based, and virgin. The RC is calculated as the sum of recycled material masses divided by the sum of all material masses.
| Material name | Source type | Mass (g) | % of total |
|---|
| Material | Source type | Mass (g) | % of total | Counts to RC? | Visual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enter material inputs above to see breakdown. | |||||
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