Aluminum Recycling How many times have our parents asked us to take the trash out? Probably more than most of us care to remember. Instead of asking if we took out the trash, parents are now beginning to ask if we sorted the trash. The purpose of my Senior Project was to promote awareness to the benefits of recycling. My community service consisted of promoting, researching and participating in the recycling of aluminum cans. There are many financial and environmental benefits to recycling aluminum and aluminum can be easily collected and reused over and over again. People need to be aware of what is happening in the environment and also be educated on what they can do to help. We need to recycle aluminum because it saves natural resources, time, money, and energy. In one year, the United States produces 160 million tons of garbage, this is enough metal to build two million automobiles, enough wood to construct a million homes, enough paper to publish all the daily newspapers in the country, enough aluminum to rebuild the entire American fleet 71 times, and would fill 11 million garbage trucks. Landfills are quickly increasing in number and size. One of the advantages of recycling is that it helps keep extra waste out of our landfills and incinerators. The sum of existing landfills is increasing because of the lack of care to help the environment. People are lazy and they cannot understand the effects of not recycling. Landfills take up space and they waste the taxpayer's dollars.

In an average adult's lifetime, he or she leaves behind 90,000 lbs. of trash for the next generation and approximately 3/5 could have been recycled. Almost everything in a trash bag can be reclaimed through recycling It is easy to recycle most household products and it will only take a little of your time. The average American family could 150 six packs of aluminum cans a year (Fact Sheet). Aluminum is currently the highest paying recyclable material so extra money can be made. Aluminum cans are lightweight, convenient, portable, and keep beverages cold. Cans that are used to package soda, beer, and other beverages account for nearly all of the beverage packaging market for some products. What is Aluminum? Aluminum is the third most abundant metal found in the earth. The earth’s crust is made up of eight percent aluminum, but aluminum is not found in its pure form. In nature, it is found as aluminum oxide. The main mining areas are in Surinam, Jamaica, Ghana, Indonesia and Russia. There are two stages in the process of making aluminum from ore. The first stage is to get alumina from bauxite. The series of steps are crushing and grinding, digesting, settling, precipitation, and calcination. That’s a lot of steps. The second stage is to get aluminum from alumina. Unlike the first stage, this stage only requires smelting. It takes a lot to make aluminum from ore. You need four tons of bauxite to make two tons of alumina, and those two tons of alumina to make one ton of aluminum. For each pound of aluminum recycled, you eliminate the need to mine four pounds of bauxite ore (Recycle and Learn). Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy that would be required to mine bauxite ore and extract alumina; the raw materials needed to manufacture aluminum (Activities Guide). One recycled aluminum can saves enough electricity to operate a TV for 3 hours (Recycle – Save Energy). Recycling reduces the energy used and it costs less than making products out of raw materials. You can either make new products or reuse the old ones. This procedure mainly cuts down on the amount of water and air pollution, which is beneficiary to both the environment and the community. Also, with the amount of exhaust fumes and factory pollutants, the world is causing ozone depletion. We depend on the ozone to defend us from harmful UV rays. If the world would recycle more, then the factories would produce fewer materials from scratch, and therefore pollute less and save our ozone layer. Aluminum is the most commonly recycled items in the United States and can be easily collected and reused over and over again. Aluminum recycling isn't limited to cans but can also include aluminum siding, rain gutters, aluminum window frames, and certain car materials and some lawn and patio furniture. Every minute of every day over 120,000 aluminum cans are recycled in the U.S. (Great Aluminum Can Roundup). Financial Benefits The price of aluminum can fluctuate, but aluminum can scrap has always had a strong price in comparison to other recyclables. Used Beverage Cans prices are currently between 0.28 - 0.55 lbs USD. A 32-gallon trash bag of aluminum cans can bring you up to $3.00. The real benefit of recycling aluminum is that this material can be recycled multiple times. Aluminum doesn’t degrade with the recycling process meaning that it can be done repeatedly. Using recycled aluminum beverage cans to produce new cans allows the aluminum can industry to make up to 20 times more cans for the same amount of energy. Recycling also creates jobs ands makes manufacturing industries more competitive. Recycling has created an estimated 60,000 jobs since 1990. In 1995, an estimated 4 million aluminum can collectors earned over 400 million dollars for their recycling efforts (Skorupa). Recycling provides manufacturing industries with a less expensive source of raw material and a long-term economic advantage. This advantage is passed to the customers who then spend less on products and packaging. Consumers could purchase the same recycled aluminum can from a grocer's shelf every 13 weeks or 4 times a year. [pic] [Fig. 1] The aluminum beverage can returns to the grocer's shelf as a new, filled can in as little as 90 days after collection, re-melting, rolling, manufacturing and distribution. When introduced in the early 1960's, 1,000 aluminum beverage cans weighed about 55 lbs. Today, through improved design, 1,000 aluminum beverage cans weigh less than 35 lbs. This is a significant reduction in raw material use and in waste to be recycled (Schlesinger).

Environmental Benefits Recycling aluminum saves raw materials. It can save 90% to 95% of the energy required to manufacture aluminum from recycled aluminum cans than from aluminum core. Recycling aluminum results in 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution than producing aluminum from natural resources (Lund). The amount of aluminum recycled in 2003 saved roughly the equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil. This is the equal of America's average daily consumption of gas.
Strong, light aluminum that replaces heavier materials like steel in automobiles helps reduce fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions, as everyone knows. And even in products that don't consume fuel directly, like food and beverage containers, appliances, furniture and building materials, aluminum makes a difference. By reducing weight, aluminum reduces the amount of fuel -- and greenhouse gas emissions -- needed to transport these products from the factory to your home. If not properly recycled, aluminum will still be on the surface of the earth after 500 years. Aluminum recycling keeps the cans and other aluminum products, which can take many decades to decompose completely out of local landfills. Recycling Programs Recycling collection methods can include drop-off centers and curbside collection programs. Churches and Clubs can prepare flyers for Fundraisers and proceeds from the recycling campaign can go to local businesses and charities. It is easy to create recycling bins for people to throw their cans and aluminum into. Pre-printed labels are available but it is easy to make your own. You can also buy heavy-duty trash bags for easy removal and storage of the cans. People will eventually get used to placing their soda pop cans into a different container. A lot of employees drink beverages from cans during the day and businesses are a good source of recyclable materials. Another tip that helps is to crush the cans safely by hand or by smashing them with your foot. This will compress the cans and allow you to add more per bag. Smashing the cans can usually double the bag weight to an average of around 10 pounds. This can add up to $5.00 - $7.00 per bag. The aluminum will need to be stored until it can be transported to recycling facility. You can clear out a section of the garage to temporarily store the bags of aluminum cans. You need something to transport the cans to the facility. A pick-up truck is usually not hard to come by. Local Recycling Facility Fortunately, there is a local company that provides aluminum recycling. A local Silt business called Green Zone Recycling collects metals of all kinds, often paying cash for items such as old refrigerators, gas grills, lawn mowers and scrap metal. They transport the aluminum to a recycling plant in Denver. Sometimes shipping about 20 tons per week, in a single trip. Currently Green Zone operates from Parachute to Aspen, and there are plans to extend into Eagle County soon. [Fig. 2] [pic] [Fig. 2] Green Zone Recycling Aluminum Processing Recyclers can process aluminum cans in a number of ways. Small low volume processors will normally flatten cans and sell them to a nearby wholesaler. Larger operations will bale or shred cans for shipment to aluminum consumers. The aluminum companies have different specifications on how aluminum cans should be prepared for processing.
Bales of cans are unloaded and tested for quality and moisture content. After inspection, the bales of cans are broken up in a shredder into small pieces. These shredded cans are then conveyed into an oven to remove the paint and residual moisture. The hot shredded aluminum is then passed over a small screen to remove and dirt and contaminants. The cans are melted and blended in with the molten metal already in the furnace. Molten aluminum is checked for proper chemistry and then removed from the furnace and poured into large molds that cast sheets. The sheets are allowed to cool and harden. It is then passed between two giant steel rollers in a large rolling mill until it is about 1/2 an inch thick and maybe 1000 feet long. A finished coil may be 2 miles long and made from over 1.2 million recycled cans. Current State of Recycling The aluminum industry is currently trying to increase the industry’s recycling rate for used aluminum beverage containers to 75% by 2015. Today, the aluminum industry recovers approximately 54% of the aluminum containers produced in the U.S. While aluminum cans are already the most widely recycled beverage container in the country, each year Americans still discard over 50 billion aluminum cans which end up in landfills.

[Fig. 3] Americans say convenience is the main reason why they don’t recycle aluminum beverage cans. The main markets for recovered Aluminum are Transportation (31%), Packaging (22%); Other (22%) which includes categories such as Electrical, Consumer Durables, Machinery & Equipment; Building & Construction (13%) and Export (12%) (Steger, Will and Bowermaster). Aluminum is very much in demand in the transportation industry due to its strength and lightweight properties. The equivalent of 24 cans of aluminum is able to hold up a 4,000-pound vehicle. Future of Recycling It seems that recycling is becoming the wave of the future. It is so easy to recycle household goods and takes so little time. Recycling is for everyone who is interested in living in a clean environment. Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves the equivalent in energy of 2,350 gallons of gasoline. This is equivalent to the amount of electricity used by the typical home over a period of 10 years (Fact Sheet). Aluminum cans are collected in a variety of ways. In some countries, cans are returned through deposit schemes. With these systems you pay a deposit or fee when you purchase a full container. When the container is empty, you return it to a designated collection site and your fee is refunded. This collection method is very effective but the cost usually exceeds the recycling value for the containers. Buy back collection mechanisms are becoming very popular in many parts of the western hemisphere. People are offered money for aluminum cans that they collect and redeem at a recycling center or reverse vending machine [Fig. 4]. [pic] [Fig. 4] Reverse vending machine Most locations buy the cans by weight but some of the older systems pay for each can. Voluntary drop off locations are still in use in much of the EEC, and in more rural parts of the US. Blue box/bin program are where a number of household recyclables are picked up at the curb and taken to large recycling facilities that sorts and packages the items [Fig. 5]. [pic] [Fig. 5] Blue box curbside containers

States and even local areas are beginning to get tough when it comes to recycling. For example, Lee County Florida has a new law in which businesses, condos owners/renters, and apartment residents are required to recycle, not only the aluminum cans, but steel, other metals, and office paper. Their reasoning is that the more recycling that occurs, the cheaper it will be to recycle in the future, thus making the product cheaper, which ultimately means that the manufacturing of the product will be cheaper. Those who don’t comply with the mandatory recycling program will be fined. In North Carolina, businesses that serve alcohol are required to recycle both aluminum cans and glass bottles (Recycle – Save Energy). It is only a matter of time before recycling is made mandatory in every state nationwide. If there is no purpose or reasoning behind aluminum clogging up our landfills it shouldn’t be disposed of in that manner. The benefits of recycling aluminum far out way the disadvantages. The world needs to maintain the amount of natural resources it maintains in order to prevent natural disasters from occurring. Recycling will aid our future generation and permit our earth to stay fresh and clean. In today's world, many cities and towns are forming types of recycling programs to provide opportunities for people to protect the environment. Anyone willing to compromise a little time and effort has the ability to recycle, or even start a recycling program. People must begin the restoration of the world in order to save our future. Aluminum recycling is a great way to aid in saving the planet as well as padding your pocketbook.
Works Cited
Activities Guide to Solid Waste and Recycling. Sacramento County Department of Solid Waste Management. 1991. Sacramento County Department of Solid Waste Management, 9850 Goethe Road, Sacramento, CA 95827.
Fact Sheet. The Aluminum Association. 900 19th St., NW, Washington, DC. 2006.
Great Aluminum Can Roundup. Can Manufacturers Institute. 1993. Can Manufacturers Institute, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036.
Lund, Herbert F. The McGraw-Hill Recycling Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1993. Recycle – Save Energy. South Carolina Electric & Gas Company 1991. South Carolina Clean & Beautiful, 1205 Pendleton Street, Ste., 517 Columbia, SC 29201.
Recycle and Learn, Recycle & Earn. Reynolds Aluminum Co. 1994. Reynolds Aluminum Co., P.O. Box 20759, Jackson, MS 39289.
Schlesinger, Mark Aluminum Recycling. 2006: 248.
Skorupa, Joe. "Renewable Resources." Popular Mechanics. July 1995: 391-403.
Steger, Will and Jon Bowermaster. Saving the Earth: A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Action. Atlantis: 215, 220.