Infinitely Recyclable Aluminum
Aluminum is one metal that is infinitely recyclable. In fact, most aluminum that is used today has been recycled at one time or another. Aluminum recycling is great for the environment and is economically profitable, too.
The benefits of aluminum recycling
Recycling aluminum has a number of obvious benefits:
- It saves energy
- It cuts down the amount of trash thrown into land fill sites
- It reduces carbon emissions
- It uses far less other raw materials than manufacturing aluminum from scratch.
Saving energy
Aluminum is naturally found in the form of an ore called bauxite. To extract the aluminum from bauxite requires huge amounts of energy. Often, aluminum smelters (places where aluminum is recovered from its ore and purified) are sited close to places where energy is cheap and plentiful, like a hydroelectric plant. However, recycled aluminum does not have to use these huge amounts of energy. The scrap metal is melted down and then made into sheet, foil, cans or whatever form aluminum is used. To recycle aluminum, only 5% of the energy needs to be used compared with extracting the metal from bauxite.
Saving landfill space
One of the most common uses of aluminum is in the humble drink can. Think of how many soda and beer cans are used every day. If it wasn’t for recycling, all those cans would just end up in the landfill. In fact, many of them do end up in the landfill – needlessly, because they are much more valuable being recycled! All it takes is about 60 days for a can to be recovered by a recycler before it appears on a supermarket shelf or behind a bar as a can with drink in it again. Recycling saves billions of cans every year in the U.S. going to trash – around 60% of all cans.
Reducing carbon emissions
Carbon dioxide is one of the main contributors to climate change and anything that can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced ever year has a beneficial effect on the world’s changing climate. Recycling aluminum cuts down carbon emissions by around 95% compared to extracting the metal from its raw material.
Cutting down on raw materials
Many other raw materials are needed to separate aluminum as a metal from bauxite. Things like lime, caustic soda and the bauxite itself are just not necessary if the metal is recycled rather than extracted.
Why is aluminum so important?
Aluminum is one of the world’s most useful metals after ferrous metals like iron and steel. It is light, strong and a good conductor of heat and electricity. It is used in huge quantities in the construction industry, aviation and marine industries, electricity transmission lines, not to forget its use in the kitchen in pots and pans and aluminum foil.
One of the most important uses of aluminum is as containers for food and beverages. In fact, more aluminum is used in the food industry than for anything else, because so many containers are designed for once only use. All of this aluminum, once it has got to the stage where it is no longer useful in its original form can be recycled and used again and again, hundreds of times – nothing happens to the metal during recycling that affects its properties.
If you have any aluminum, whether it’s just a bunch of cans or something bigger that you no longer need, dilleroadrecycling can offer you a good price and will ensure that your unwanted product will not go to waste.