A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season will soon be upon us. Since this means a lot of aluminum cans will be used to hold some of our liquid refreshments, let’s talk a little about the recycling of such cans. The information here comes from two Resource Recycling newsletter articles.
“Novelis, the world’s largest recycler of aluminum, will invest tens of millions of dollars expanding its recycling capabilities and improving safety at its Georgia plant,” The first article said.
Novelis will spend $36 million on upgrades at its Georgia facility, which recycles used beverage containers (UBCs) and other sources of aluminum scrap.
This upgrade includes: Adding aluminum recycling equipment, incorporating a new baghouse for controlling dust, and increasing safety by keeping most pedestrians some distance from many of their vehicles.
Although the facility will continue to recycle UBCs, the project will also expand the plant’s ability to recycle automotive production scrap. The planned completion date for the upgrade is the fall of 2021.
The plant, which opened in 1980, has played a key role in the development of recycling technology for Novelis. Through this technology, as their 2019 fiscal year report relates, their products now contain 61% recycled content. This is up from the 57% the previous year.
The second article on Aluminum mentioned the recycling rate for aluminum cans in the U.S. is currently just below 50 percent. It’s up just slightly from the consumer recycling rate for used beverage cans (UBCs) of 49.8% in 2018 and 45.1% in 2017. Unfortunately, the 2017 percent, was a disappointing drop from the 50.4% in 2016.
It should be noted that the recycling rate excludes UBC imported from other countries, thus providing us with a more accurate representation of U.S. consumers’ recycling efforts.
This information comes from surveys of: can sheet producers, can manufacturers and secondary producers of aluminum. Together, these organizations represent nearly all can production activity in the U.S.
The information is used for the industry groups to estimate how much UBC aluminum doesn’t get recycled. It shows in 2018, an estimated 45.2 billion used cans, worth more than $800 million, ended up in landfills.
“This loss has a significant negative impact on the environment through wasted energy and resources, and on the economy through lost jobs,” the report said.
Some better news: These industry groups also studied the average amount of recycled content in a can. Using averages from 2016 and 2017 surveys, aluminum cans have about 73% recycled content. This is up slightly from the 70% in a 2012 survey.
The 73% recycled content is made up of the following components: UBC scrap (43%), non-UBC post-consumer aluminum scrap (7%) and post-industrial scrap (23%). Included in the “post-industrial” category is both production scrap and metal recovered from other industries, such as construction and transportation.
This recycled content number is taken from surveys of five main can sheet producers: Alcoa, Constellium, Logan, Novelis and Tri-Arrows.
Since aluminum cans are one of the few recycle items where you get money for them, many people recycle them for that reason. However, it should be noted that our Green Guy Recycling Services also pays for other aluminum waste materials, plus copper, and iron and steel.
But even if you don’t get paid for the recycled materials, you know it’s the right thing to do and thus it makes you feel good.
Till next week, do have a great one...
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Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or email omaier@txstate.edu.
