Recyclers in Rust stand at most monuments, plus the safe zone ones at Outpost, Bandit Camp and the Floating City. Since the Power Trip update (August 2026) the rate depends on the machine: 40% in a safe zone, 50% at a normal monument, 60% once the Power Plant has enough heavy fuses in it, and 75% from the one red recycler inside the plant.

Where the recyclers are, monument by monument

Safe zones

Outpost has three recyclers in its own recycling corner. Bandit Camp has two inside the dredge: climb to the second-floor casino, take the door left of the big wheel, and they sit along the wall past the steering wheel and the poker table. The Floating City, the barge monument, is a safe zone with three yellow recyclers, on the farm barge's first floor, at the raised back of the food barge and by the clothing vendor on the supplies barge. All of these pay 40% at 8 seconds per item, the price of having turrets on your side. The fishing villages, Ranch, Large Barn and the Apartment Complex are safe zones with no recycler at all.

Roadside monuments

The quick stops on an early component run. Abandoned Supermarket: behind the building, past the chain-link fence. Oxum's Gas Station: in the garage, left of the car lift by the tire pile, under the half-open door. Mining Outpost: inside the building between a pallet stack and a shelf. Lighthouse: third floor, along the stone wall opposite the tower.

Mid-sized monuments

Large Harbor: beside the shipping building's yard, against the wall facing the water. Small Harbor: on the blue-crane pier, down the stairs through the fence and right, behind the stair wall. Junkyard: up the ramps from the southern entrance to the covered area, beside the hobo barrel. Satellite Dish: under the broken base of the fallen dish, among the wooden crates. Train Yard: red warehouse, top floor, first door. Water Treatment Plant: top floor of the long warehouse, by the repair bench.

Sewer Branch has two, one behind the red warehouse at the top of the monument, one underground past the parkour and the blue keycard door. Airfield has two as well, in Hangar 2 behind the crates and in the garage building across from the hangars. Ferry Terminal, Arctic Research Base (under the big satellite station), Giant Excavator (main control room, below the platform opposite the engine) and Radtown (the garage's recycler room, 25 radiation protection, with windows people can shoot through) have one each. The Dome got one in its puzzle room in the October 2025 Meta Shift update, and on jungle maps the Ziggurat has one under the concrete catwalk by the back entrance.

The dangerous ones

Launch Site: near the three cylinders on the warehouse side, under an overhang across from a blue container. Military Tunnels: a metal shack near the tunnel exit by the Shelter 4 storage. Power Plant has three green recyclers (top floor of the puzzle building opposite the cooling towers, the control room level of the central puzzle building, and an open-ended shipping container near the aqueduct tunnels) plus the red one, which Corrosion Hour places in the central green keycard area across from the existing one. Both Oil Rigs, the Missile Silo, Abandoned Military Base and Abandoned Cabins have none.

The four rates since Power Trip

Yellow safe zone recyclers were left alone: 40%, 8 seconds per item. Green monument recyclers dropped from 60% to 50% by default, climb back to 60% with what Facepunch calls sufficient power from the Power Plant, and at maximum power their cycle shortens from 5 seconds to 4.5. The red recycler returns 75% and refuses to run below maximum power.

Power comes from heavy fuses, found as loot and pushed into fuse panels inside the Power Plant's green keycard area. Corrosion Hour's phase table runs from 1 to 3 fuses for phase 1 up to 18 or more for phase 4, the maximum the red recycler wants. A fuse burns for 9,600 seconds, about 2 hours 40 minutes, and cannot be pulled out. The recycler calculator has all four rates, to price the same bag at Outpost against a monument before you walk.

What to feed it

Scrap per item:

Item Base scrap Safe zone 40% Monument 50% Powered 60% Red 75% Also returns at base
Rifle Body 50 20 25 30 37.5 3 HQM
Tech Trash 40 16 20 24 30 2 HQM
Electric Fuse 40 16 20 24 30 nothing
SMG Body 30 12 15 18 22.5 3 HQM
Semi Automatic Body 30 12 15 18 22.5 150 metal frags, 3 HQM
Gears 20 8 10 12 15 25 metal frags
Metal Spring 20 8 10 12 15 2 HQM
Sheet Metal 16 6.4 8 9.6 12 200 metal frags, 2 HQM
Metal Pipe 10 4 5 6 7.5 2 HQM
Road Signs 10 4 5 6 7.5 2 HQM

Rifle bodies are the best scrap per slot, then tech trash and fuses, then SMG and semi bodies. Sheet metal and semi bodies are the frag items, 100 and 75 metal fragments each at an unpowered monument, which makes sheet metal worth carrying despite its poor scrap.

How the fractions work

The game never hands out half an item. At 50% a rifle body's 3 HQM becomes 1.5: 1 HQM, plus a 50% roll for a second. A spring at a powered recycler is 2 times 0.6, so 1 HQM and a 20% chance of another; at Outpost it is 0.8, an 80% chance of one and a 20% chance of nothing. Over a stack this averages out to the table, so read the calculator's HQM column as an expectation.

What is worth more kept

Gears, springs and pipes recycle badly next to what they cost to replace. A gear gives 10 scrap and about 12 frags at a monument, but crafting one takes 100 scrap and 25 frags at a level 3 workbench, and Outpost sold one for 125 scrap in Corrosion Hour's March 2026 price list; a Garage Door alone takes 2. A spring recycles to 10 scrap and 1 HQM, crafts for 50 scrap and 2 HQM, sells for 60, and the Assault Rifle needs 4. A pipe is 5 scrap and 1 HQM from the recycler, 20 scrap and 2 HQM on the bench, 30 scrap at Outpost, and every rocket eats 2 on top of its 150 gunpowder and 10 explosives. The crafting calculator adds up the pipes along with the sulfur for a raid, and the sulfur farming guide covers the harder half of that bill. Tech trash goes into C4 at 2 per charge and a fuse opens a keycard room, so hold a few of each once you have the blueprints.

A first-hour routine

Run the road and smash every barrel between spawn and the nearest small monument. Components go into the Supermarket, Gas Station or Mining Outpost recycler, which pays 25 scrap per rifle body against 20 at Outpost and cycles in 5 seconds instead of 8. Recycle the bodies, tech trash and fuses, keep the pipes and springs, and carry the scrap to Outpost, whose resource exchange sold 250 metal fragments for 25 scrap, 1,000 stone for 50 and 1,000 wood for 20 in Corrosion Hour's March 2026 table. Once you own a kit and the plant is lit, the same bag at a monument is worth half again what Outpost pays, 60 against 40, and that gap is the whole reason people risk it.

Sources