Recycling a Can, Can Change The World – A Featured Article

To prevent the food from being spoiled before and during containment, quite a number of methods are used: pasteurization, boiling (and other applications of high temperature over a period of time), refrigeration, freezing, drying, vacuum treatment, antimicrobial agents that are natural to the recipe of the foodstuff being preserved, a sufficient dose of ionizing radiation, submersion in a strongly saline, acid, base, osmotically extreme (for example very sugary) or other microbe-challenging environments.

Aluminum Can

The development of the “can” originated in Napoleon’s time around the early 1800s; however, the use of aluminum in beverage containers did not debut until 1965. The aluminum can is the most valuable beverage container to recycle. By doing so, its recycling provides environmental and economic benefits to communities and organizations across the country.

Why Recycle Aluminium Cans?

Recycling aluminium cans has a number of significant environmental benefits including reducing litter, reducing landfill and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Recycling just one aluminium can saves enough electricity to power a TV set for 3 hours and making cans from recycled aluminium uses 95% less energy than making them from scratch.  This represents a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and help combat climate change!

Where Can I Recycle My Aluminium Cans?

At Home

Most councils around Australia collect aluminium cans via their kerbside recycling service.  All councils are different, so your council may collect aluminium cans in a recycling bin, crate, tub or recycling bag.

In Public

An increasing number of councils are installing public place (street-based) recycling bins.  If your area has access to these bins, ensure you place your aluminium cans in them for recycling.
If there are no public place recycling bins, take your cans home or to work with you for recycling.  Cans are light-weight and easily crushed, making them ideal for transporting home.

At Work

Many workplaces now have recycling collection facilities.  If you head out to the park or a café for lunch and can’t find a recycling bin, take your cans back to work to be recycled.

Drop-Off Locations

If kerbside or workplace recycling isn’t available to you, there may be a recycling drop-off location near you that collects aluminium cans.  Some of these may even pay for cans.

The Aluminium Can Recycling Process

When your recycling is collected it is taken to a Material Recycling Facility (MRF).  At the MRF a ranges of processes are used to sort the different types of recyclable materials from each other.

Contaminants like plastic bags are removed by hand.  Fans are used to separate paper from heaver materials.  Magnets pick out the steel products. In some advanced MRFs optical (light) beams, combined with compressed air jets, are used to separate plastic and glass.  And electrical (or eddie) currents are used to separate the aluminium cans.All of the separated materials, including the cans, are sorted into piles or bales.

Regardless of where they are collected in Australia all aluminium can bales are sent to a facility in NSW for recycling. This is a melting facility, or smelter. Here they are melted down and turned into aluminium ingots. These ingots are then heated to 500 degrees Celsius and rolled into sheets of aluminium just 2.5mm thick.

Aluminium Cans and the Environment

Aluminium cans have a number of characteristics that contribute to their environmental benefits.  These include:

• They are 100% recyclable and, because they remain in one piece when opened (ie no lids or labels), the whole container is recycled.

• 95% less energy is used when making an aluminium can from recycled material compared to raw materials – this represents a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions!

• Empty cans are light-weight and easily crushed, which means they are easy to take home for recycling when you can’t find a recycling bin at the beach, park or sporting field.

• They are light weight and compact (compared to glass, for example), making them easy and efficient to transport.

• Over the past 25 years aluminium cans have become about 30% lighter. Thinner, stronger sections are now being used with less metal, less energy and more savings in weight. An average aluminium can (without its contents, of course) weighed 16.55 grams in 1992. By 2005 the aluminium can weighed about 14.7 grams.

Facts About Aluminium Cans – What is aluminium?

Aluminium is the most common metallic element on earth, making up about 8% of the earth’s crust, concentrated in the outer 16 km. Only oxygen and silicon are more abundant.

It is the most widely used non-ferrous metal today. Aluminium never occurs in its metallic form in nature.

Where does aluminium come from?

Aluminium is the most abundant metal found in the earth’s crust. However, it is difficult to isolate because usually it is ‘mixed in’ with other elements. You can find aluminium in most rocks, vegetation and soils.

Being so difficult to isolate, aluminium wasn’t discovered until 1807 by Sir Humphry Davy. Then it wasn’t until 1886 that an economically viable process was developed to extract aluminium.

How many aluminium cans are produced in Australia?

Australians consumed over 3 billion aluminium cans in 2005. Of these, 51% were soft drink cans and 31% were beer cans.

What is sold in aluminium cans?

In Australia, you can buy all kinds of soft drinks, mixed drinks and beer in aluminium cans, in a variety of shapes, sizes and packs.

In other countries you can find fruit juices and milk in cans. In Japan, aluminium cans are used for housing their popular drink on the run – warm, milky coffee – straight from the vending machine.

In the USA, aluminium cans have been used for keeping food fresh as well. Peanuts, potato crisps and corn chips have all been put into cans.

Aluminium cans are the only container permitted in the Himalayas, Nepal because they are light and easy to crush. The local people who collect used aluminium cans also earn money from recycling the cans.

The benefits of aluminium beverage cans

Aluminium is highly suitable as a packaging material for beverages because of its:

• Durability: It does not corrode easily.
• Weight: With a density of 2.70g/cubic cm (compared with iron used in steel 7.86g/cubic cm), aluminium products are very light, cutting down on transport costs.
• High thermal conductivity: Aluminium transfers heat 2.4 times faster than iron. This, combined with the fact that very thin sheets can be produced, means that heat is lost and gained through aluminium very quickly. Hence it is ideal for cooking and as a cold drink container.
• Malleability: It can be rolled into extremely thin foil and can be cast and joined and still retain much of its strength, which adds to its value as a light packaging material because less of it needs to be used.
• Low melting point: Aluminium has a melting point of 660°C compared with 1540°C for iron. This is a great benefit for the environment as less energy is required for processing and recycling.
• Aluminium beverage cans have a protective polymer coating applied on the inside to prolong storage life. This polymer coating ensures that the acids and salts in beverages never actually come into contact with the metal.

What’s the correct spelling?

Discoverer, Sir Humphry Davy, actually named the element ‘aluminum’. This is the spelling still used in the USA today, but in many other English speaking nations (including Australia) we spell the word with an extra letter: ‘aluminium’.

Sources: Alimunium Recycling Poster , Lunch Recycling Poster, The Aluminium Can Group

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