Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquids (PLAL) of recycled Fe-Cr-Ni and Fe-Cr stainless steels offers an eco-friendly, green synthesis pathway for producing robust, ligand-free, multi-metal nanostructured electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. This circular-economy approach transforms industrial steel waste into high-performance, low-cost alternatives to noble metals like platinum and iridium. PLAL is performed on two recycled common forks in order to create NPs and modify the target. NPs were mainly composed of iron oxide, with traces of other metals, while the modified target showed traces of various oxides. Various techniques are used to obtain information about the features (morphology, structures, composition) of the produced NPs and the modified target. The application explored in this work is water electrolysis in an alkaline environment, at the base of green hydrogen production. The modified forks and NPs resulted in the best overpotential values of ∼ 300 mV and ∼ − 185 mV at ± 10 m A / c m 2 , respectively, for oxygen and hydrogen production. The results are not outstanding among the state-of-the-art, but outstanding since the whole process is performed on scraps without wet chemical methods. The choice of cutlery depends on the constituent materials, reported to be suitable for water splitting, but the laser ablation technique is so flexible and adaptable that any kind of solid material can be modified for specific applications.