Aluminum

The making of aluminum

Aluminum is a hard, yet lightweight, rust resistant metal found in the Earth's crust in combination with other elements, primarily the mineral bauxite. As a metal, it is a relatively recent “discovery,” only having been established as a metal in the early 1800’s. Because of the difficulty in purifying it, aluminum was considered a semi-precious metal, rarer than silver, for much of the nineteenth century. Only when new chemical processes were developed and lower-cost electricity was available, was the mass production of aluminum possible.

The United States' aluminum industry is the world's largest, annually producing about $39.1 billion in products and exports. U.S. companies are the largest single producer of primary aluminum. According to the Aluminum Association, Americans consume 100 billion cans, weighing a total of about 3 billion pounds each year. (Aluminum Now, a publication of the Aluminum Association, January 2004. For complete text, see the link at the right, in “web resources.”)

Cans into cans into cans

Aluminum is the most valuable material among those commonly recycled by consumers and unlike many materials, it can be recycled over and over again. Clean aluminum foil, bakery tins, and pie plates are usually acceptable by most recycling programs, but the greatest source of recycled consumer aluminum is cans.

The first two-piece aluminum cans weighed three ounces. Today, one can weighs slightly more than one-half ounce. In 1972, one pound of aluminum yielded 21.75 cans. With less material per can, one pound of aluminum now makes approximately 33 cans. According to the Can Manufacturer’s Institute, additional changes in manufacturing technology have resulted in a weight savings of 200 million pounds of aluminum per year.

A can is recycled, turned into a new can and back on store shelves in 60 days. It is the only material in the consumer-waste recycling stream that more than covers its own cost of collection and processing. The process of aluminum recycling therefore helps to subsidize the cost of recycling other less valuable materials such as glass, plastic, and steel.

Because the refining of aluminum metal is so energy intensive, aluminum manufactured from recycled material saves 95 percent of the energy required to produce aluminum from ore. According to the Aluminum Association, aluminum recycling annually saves the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil – nearly America's entire gas consumption for one day.

Recycling aluminum cans also generates funds for a wide range of community causes. The aluminum industry pays out over $750 million annually to organizations and individuals undertaking collections.