Aluminum Recycling

Aluminum recycling is great way to help the environment. It can be found almost anywhere, like drinking cans, foil, vinyl siding, gutters and much more. It is an excellent recyclable material. Aluminum can go a long way and can always be recycled and there is no downside to recycling aluminum. Making aluminum from recycled aluminum is less than five percent of what it takes to make it from bauxite ore. An aluminum recycling machine crushes and treats the ore to produce an oxide called alumina. A high voltage current is sent through the mixture and separates the aluminum from the oxygen. Then the extremely hot metal is recast into ingots to manufacture new goods.

The beverage companies use the most aluminum. Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to allow a light bulb with 100 watts burning for three and a half hours. Aluminum beverage cans are getting thinner. Twenty or so years ago a pound of aluminum yielded about twenty cans. Currently, that same pound of aluminum can make about 30 cans and is the thickness of a human hair.

Every three months people throw away enough drinking cans to rebuild every commercial plane in the United States. People also throw away enough drinking cans each year to provide the auto industry a year's worth of new automobiles. It takes about 400 years for aluminum to break down naturally.

Recycling aluminum is very important. Instead of allowing aluminum to go to waste in landfills, we can recover it, shred it, and bale the metal for recycling.