Health & Fitness
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Aluminum cans are just about the best thing you can recycle. Recyling cans saves energy, reduces water pollution, and makes money.
What’s the most valuable item in your recycling bin? The aluminum can!
Aluminum ore or bauxite is mined out of the ground and requires an energy intensive smelting process to turn it into the metal aluminum that we all recognize. Recycling aluminum cans reduces the need for mining bauxite, saving 95 percent of the energy needed to make aluminum cans from raw materials and reducing water pollution by 97 percent. This efficient recycling of just 1 ton of aluminum cans conserves more than the energy equivalent of 36 barrels of oil or 1,665 gallons of gasoline. Aluminum never wears out and is infinitely recyclable too. Alcoa estimates that 75 percent of all the aluminum ever produced is still being used. Even though aluminum is a small percentage of the items in your recycling bin, the aluminum recycling industry generates approximately 40 percent of the revenue attributed to recycling efforts and often subsidizes the recycling of plastics and other items.
Americans use more aluminum cans than many industrialized countries, but we only recycle 57 percent of our cans, falling short of the world’s average recycling rate of 69 percent. Since 1972 some 37 billion pounds of aluminum have been recycled in the US. These 1.2 trillion cans have earned Americans more than $25 billion.
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The other day I was asked about recycling can tabs is better for fundraisers for charities because they are more valuable than the rest of the aluminum in the can. I was pretty sure of the answer, but looked it up anyway. This is what I found, courtesy of Alcoa:
Are can tabs better to recycle than cans?
No. Often local charities encourage communities to collect can tabs and donate them for various causes. This is a great way to engage a community, and the tabs are fun and easy to collect. But their value is no different to a recycler than the rest of the can. It's all the same aluminum. For the sake of the environment, when you're collecting tabs, don't forget to recycle the rest of the can!
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Fun Facts
More than 105,000 cans are recycled each minute in the US.
In 2009, Americans recycled 55.5 billion aluminum cans. Those cans, placed end-to-end, could make 167 circles around the earth.
Each aluminum can is made of about 50 percent recycled aluminum.
Once inside the recycling network, a new aluminum can can be back on the store shelf in as few as 60 days.
Recycling one aluminum beverage can save enough electricity to: power a TV for three hours, or a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
Recycling 40 aluminum beverage cans has the energy-saving equivalent of one gallon of gasoline.
