The total quantity of wastes generated by metallurgical industry continues to grow. The storage of these wastes involves: occupying large areas of land; pollution potential of all environmental factors; expenses related to land storage etc. In order to eliminate the disadvantages entailed by the storage of metallurgical wastes one must find feasible solutions for their recycling or recovery. In this respect, a first step is their characterization. The paper presents an assessment of wastes recycling potential from metallurgical slag dumps. There were taken and chemically characterized the waste samples, in order to identify the compounds that have recycling potential. The determination of chemical composition of the waste samples was performed by spectrometric methods. The apparatus used was a spectrometer based on X-ray fluorescence. The chemical characterization is the most significant factor in determining the potential viability of recycling these wastes to recover metals. The results obtained from chemical characterization of these wastes, indicated the presence of the following compounds: magnesium oxide (MgO), calcium oxide (CaO), alumina (Al 2O3), total iron (Fe total), silicon dioxide (SiO2), manganese oxide (MnO), phosphorus pentoxide (P 2O5), vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), titanium dioxide (TiO2), chromium trioxide (Cr2O3), zinc oxide (ZnO) and lead oxide (PbO). Therefore, the identified chemical compounds have a major economic importance and through their recycling it is possible to save natural resources.