Aluminum Cans Recycling Facts
Overview
The average aluminum can in America has 40 percent post-consumer recycled aluminum, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
When you throw away aluminum products, such as beverage cans and food containers, they end up in landfills. But if you recycle them, you conserve energy and help to prevent landfills from increasing.
Function
The aluminum can recycling process starts with the consumer, who cleans and sorts aluminum cans and then places them in the proper container for pickup or takes them directly to a recycling center. Workers then sort out high-quality aluminum items and discard any useless bits, such as pieces contaminated by dirt, wood, glass, plastic or other foreign materials. Workers melt down the selected pieces and shape them into ingots, which they later roll out into large sheets. Manufacturers buy the sheets and use them to make aluminum products.
Features
Recycling aluminum cans reduces waste that contributes to the problem of overflowing landfills. Recycling cans also conserves energy because the aluminum-recycling process uses less than 5 percent of the energy that the manufacture of new aluminum from bauxite ore requires, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Significance
In 2008, aluminum was 1.3 percent of the total amount of municipal solid waste, for a total of 3.4 million tons, according to the EPA. Compare that to 1960, when aluminum was only 0.4 percent or 340,000 tons. These totals do not include the aluminum present in automobiles, which is measured separately. The largest category of aluminum waste in 2008 was used containers, such as beverage and food cans, according to the EPA.
Conservation Benefits
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources lists the conservation benefits of recycling aluminum. Recycling a single aluminum can conserves as much energy as 6 ounces of gasoline. In 2000, the United States recycled 54.8 million aluminum cans, conserving the energy equivalent of 2.58 billion gallons of gasoline. The aluminum not recycled in the United States that year would have saved the equivalent of another 2.15 billion gallons of gasoline.
Potential
The increasing use of plastics for beverage containers and other products is lowering the demand for aluminum products, according to industry sources cited by the EPA. But demand may increase as car manufacturers develop new, lighter car technologies in their efforts to increase fuel efficiency.
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/138336-aluminum-cans-recycling-facts/#ixzz1KIm16azJ
No comments:
Post a Comment