Can Recycling

Yes, You Can

Recycling aluminum cans has long been a way to make a little extra cash on the side. In many communities, Scouts and youth groups still do.

Aluminum factories pay out over $800 million USD per year for cans. Why?

It actually costs more to produce aluminum from raw materials than it does to re-melt, re- cycle, re-use the old. And the cans are abundant.
Almost 54 million in the US along are tossed into recycle bins. Makes you wonder how many total it would be if the counted the ones in the landfills and along the back roads, doesn't it.

So who gets all that money?

Today, it is mostly municipalities that get the revenues. Cities that have recycle at curbside service or at convenient centers sell the recycled goods to aluminum manufacturing plants. The money received pays for the city workers and trucks. But it also goes into the coffers for libraries, parks, roads and schools. So when you finihs with the can, don't put it in the can... recycle it and help pay for a new book, or part of a swing, or someone's salary. It all adds up.

Where do the cans go?

The cans are taken to a centrally located factory to be crushed, chemically washed and rolled into thin layers. Those layers are then hauled off to aluminum plants for smelting. But before they are smelted, their logos are burned off. Makes sense, you'd hate a Coke can to have a Pepsi label inside of it, right?

Actually the cans are shredded in to the size of potato chips to make the smelting more cost efficient and less polluting. That's a good thing. Then the chips are blended with virgin aluminum and rolled out into huge industrial sized sheets to be cut and shaped into.. well, probably cans. And so the cycle, or re-cycle begins again.