What Can I Recycle?
Thrift, saving, and re-use are habits earlier generations of Americans knew well. Recycling is simply a modern version of these character traits, helping us make the best use of our planet's limited natural resources. Recycling your daily newspaper, plastic bottles and other items is a great way to help.
See how the actions you take affect the environment.
Experience MoreWhat can I place in my recycling bin?
Metals
Do you think of your empty soda cans and food cans as a natural resource? They are. The scrap value of the 36 billion aluminum cans Americans discarded in one year alone was about $600 million. Apart from the economic impact, the environmental savings of recycling metal are enormous. Recycling steel and tin cans, for example, saves 74% of the energy used to produce them. A steel mill that uses recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution and mining wastes by about 70%.
Aluminum Cans
On average, Americans drink one beverage from an aluminum can every day. But we recycle just over 50% of the cans we use.
Aluminum-can manufacturers have recently upped the ante and are setting out to recycle 75% of the cans by 2012.
Since the cans are 100% recyclable, we could drastically reduce the energy needed to produce brand new cans simply by recycling our empties.
An aluminum can is able to be returned to the shelf, as a new can, as quickly as 60 days after it's put into your recycling container.
Coast-to-coast, there are about 10,000 locations that buy aluminum, making it easy for Americans to redeem their used beverage cans for cash. In fact, recycling aluminum cans is a $1 billion/year industry in this country.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for three hours or to burn a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
A Day in the Life of a Recycled Can- Customer takes can to a recycling center or puts it into a recycling bin.
- The can is transported to a processing facility.
- A giant magnet lifts out cans that are made of metals such steel. Since aluminum cans aren't magnetic, they drop down to a conveyor belt and are gathered.
- The aluminum is shredded, washed and turned into aluminum chips.
- The chips are melted in a large furnace.
- The melted aluminum is poured into molds called "ingots."
- The ingots are taken to a factory where they're melted into rolls of thin, flat sheets.
- From the sheets, manufacturers make new products, including new beverage cans, pie pans, license plate frames, and aluminum foil.
- Beverage companies fill the cans and deliver them to grocery stores for customers to purchase.
- Customers take used cans to a recycling center and the process starts all over again.