Recycling Calculator

Jackhammer gives the most scrap per item in a Rust recycler: 30 at a green one and 45 at the red one at the Power Plant. Per minute it loses to Tech Trash, which the recycler takes 5 at a time instead of one: put a stack of each in the Recycling Calculator to compare them.

Rifle Body pays the most scrap of any Rust component, 25 from a green recycler; the red one pays 37 and banks the extra half for its next payout. Tech Trash comes next at 20 each, but goes in 5 per cycle.

A Rust safe zone recycler is worse for scrap: it returns 40% of a recipe and 80% of an item's scrap every 8 seconds, against 50% and 100% every 5 seconds at a green monument one, so it hands back half the scrap a minute. What it buys is the safe zone around it. Switch Which recycler between Yellow and Green in the Recycling Calculator to see the gap on your own pile.

A Rust recycler takes a tenth of a full stack each cycle, rounded up, from one slot at a time: 5 Tech Trash, 2 Gears or 1 Jackhammer. A cycle lasts 8 seconds at a yellow recycler, 5 at a green one, 4.5 on a stage 4 grid and 4 at the red one.

Rust recyclers are fixed machines that come with the map: green ones at 20 monuments, yellow ones at Outpost, Bandit Camp and the floating city that each Deep Sea opening brings, and a single red one at the Power Plant. The Where? button of the Recycling Calculator lists them and marks each one on its monument's plan.

Yes, condition changes what a Rust recycler gives back: a worn item returns its share times its condition, never less than a tenth, and an item that does not stack loses scrap a second time. A Jackhammer at half condition pays 7 scrap at a green recycler instead of 30 and keeps the other 0.5. Set the Durability slider in the Recycling Calculator to check any wear.

A Rust recycler has six output slots. Once they are full, scrap that finds no room drops on the ground and the machine keeps going, but the first resource or component that finds no room drops too and switches it off. Empty the slots and turn it back on. The Recycling Calculator counts the output slots your pile fills and says when it runs over.

No recycler can be crafted or placed in Rust's base game: each one comes with the map, at a monument, a safe zone or a floating city. The Recycle Bin Workbench Upgrade only refunds part of a craft and takes nothing apart.

The RustPotato Recycling Calculator is the best recycler calculator for Rust because it reads every recipe share, scrap value and cycle time from the game files and runs all 768 items cycle by cycle across all five recycler settings. It gives the sure, most and average return, adjusts for wear with the Durability slider, and sends returned components back in with Recycle these too.