Top 10 Reasons To Recycle Aluminum
Many of you may ask yourselves, why should I recycle aluminum? The answer is quite simple.
10. Because you "can."
9. You can earn cash for cans.
8. Recycling aluminum uses 95% less energy than making new aluminum. The energy saved can power a TV for three hours!
7. You can help the environment one can at a time.
6. Aluminum is the most recycled beverage container.
5. Once an aluminum can is recycled, it can be part of a new can within 60 days.
4. There is no limit to the amount of times aluminum can be recycled.
3. We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
2. The recycling industry employs tens of thousands of people.
1. Money from aluminum can recycling goes toward building more Habitat for Humanity homes!
In addition, recycling saves energy, creates income and helps our economy.
Saving Energy: For each pound of metal recycled, the aluminum industry saves the energy resources needed to generate about 7.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The total amount of energy saved each year by using recycled aluminum, as opposed to smelting aluminum from raw ore, is enough to meet the energy needs of a city like Pittsburgh, Pa. for six years.
Creating Income: Can recycling has created about 30,000 new jobs at recycling centers, aluminum companies and in the transportation support industries. A used aluminum can returned to a recycling center is worth over a penny to a consumer. Sure, a penny may not seem like a lot, but when you take into consideration the amount of canned drinks Americans consume each day, the totals really add up!
Helping the Economy: A used aluminum can returned to a recycling center is worth over a penny to a consumer. Sure, a penny may not seem like a lot, but when you take into consideration the amount of canned drinks Americans consume each day, the totals really
A common practice since the early 1900s, aluminium recycling is not new. It was, however, a low-profile activity until the late 1960s when the exploding popularity of aluminium beverage cans finally placed recycling into the public consciousness.
Sources for recycled aluminium include automobile parts, windows and doors, appliances, containers and other products। As recycling does not damage the metal's structure, aluminium can be recycled indefinitely and still used to produce any product for which new aluminium could have been used.
Aluminium is usually recycled in the following basic way:
1. In the case of products like aluminium drink cans, the cans are shredded and ground into small pieces.
2. The small pieces are then melted in a furnace to produce molten aluminium (by the end of this stage the recycled aluminium is indistinguishable from virgin aluminium and so further processing is identical for both). Some minor adjustments to the actual composition of the final product is required to eliminate impurities and to conform the recycled aluminium to the proper amalgam from which different materials are manufactured, including slightly different compositions for can bodies and lids.
3. The molten aluminium is then poured in to moulds to create large ingots.
4. The ingots are then forced through rollers to create sheets of aluminium of whatever thickness is required for the product the metal will be used in.
