Cyclical Nature of Aluminum

In case you didn’t know, aluminum can be recycled over and over again due to the nature of its atomic structure. The life cycle of aluminum does not adhere to the “cradle-to-grave” pattern that is typical of many other materials. “Cradle-to-grave” is a term that describes the life of a product from its beginning up until the point that the product is discarded or can no longer be used for another purpose. Conversely, aluminum follows the “cradle-to-cradle” design whereby a product is created and has the composition to be used endlessly in the future. This feature of aluminum lends itself to significant energy savings given that re-melting aluminum takes a mere 5% of the power necessary in primary production of virgin aluminum. Less demand for energy results in a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The aluminum industry boasts that the global energy savings each year from recycling aluminum is in the ballpark of 215,000 gigawatt hours- equal to the total annual electricity used in all of Australia! Keep your aluminum in the cycle by recycling those cans!

Curbside Recycling- Starting to Make “Cents”

A New York Times article from May 2008 indicates that the cost to operate curbside recycling for New York City residents is finally becoming more competitive with trash disposal costs. Historically, the costs for providing a residential curbside recycling program have been substantially higher per ton than the costs to simply haul away the material as garbage to a landfill. Just a few years ago in 2004, New York City spent around $34 to $48 a ton more to recycle than to ship garbage to the landfill. This year, however, the price difference has dwindled to just $17 a ton more for recycling, underscoring the rising costs of sending garbage to landfills in other states and the increase in redemption values for recyclables. The City is beginning to realize that increased participation in curbside recycling yields more revenues from recyclables as well as savings from paying fewer tipping fees at the landfill. Recycling is really starting to make “cents” in more ways than one!

Like Summer Temperatures, Aluminum Can Recycling on the Rise

The summer heat is not the only thing that is climbing this time of year. As seen from the graph below, UBC (used beverage can) reclamation rates released for May 2008 showed an impressive increase of 23.3% from the month prior. Year-to-date totals revealed a steady incline of 3.4% compared to this time last year. These increases are good news in the ongoing efforts to combat the 251 million tons of garbage produced each year by Americans. Reclaiming more cans from the waste stream for recycling translates into turning down the thermostat on electricity usage and greenhouse gas emissions- all of which results in a cleaner planet for everyone. With the rest of 2008 remaining, let’s see if we can turn up the heat on recycling even more aluminum cans!

It’s Big Ben…only BETTER

Editor's note: I'm posting this contribution on behalf of Guest Blogger Amy Chen, summer intern at Alcoa.

You never thought the sight of your favorite clock tower would be what inspired you to recycle, but the mayor of London certainly hopes that the sight of the 20ft high aluminum rendition of London’s Big Ben will remind us all to reduce, reuse, and recycle!
Four aluminum replications of famous UK structures, constructed solely with Coca-Cola cans, were unveiled in the UK last week as part of UK Recycling Week. Included amongst these famous scenic choices are Big Ben, the Angel of the North (less cool than the Big Ben, perhaps, but if you saw the 10,000 miniature Coke cans needed to construct it, you’d still be impressed!), Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the Birmingham Bull Statue.
And OK, so maybe this will take tens of thousands of aluminum cans out of the recycling stream. And it will cost us a little energy, perhaps, but hopefully the hordes of people rushing to recycle their cans will offset this loss.

Alcoa issues a Can-ifesto

Editor's note:

I'm publishing this for my buddy Gregg Wittbecker, Alcoa's recycling czar. This is the text of a handout he prepared for Earthfest in Knoxville Tennessee this week. Good words to live by.

Where Alcoa Stands on Recycling
What A Waste!
1. The U.S. presently recycles less than 50% of all the aluminum cans it consumes.
2. That equals about 600,000,000 pounds of aluminum.
3. This wastes the equivalent of 4.2 BILLION kilowatts of electricity per year that is used to produce virgin aluminum to replace those cans.
4. That’s enough electricity to power 4,500,000 households in the U.S. for 1 year.
5. Another way to look at it…it’s the equivalent of 12,000,000 barrels of oil or equal to what we import per week.

Alcoa’s Call to Action
1. In January 2008, Alcoa challenged its partners in the aluminum industry to raise recycling rates to 75% by 2015.

2. This can only be accomplished through a joint effort of government, industry and the general public.

3. What needs to be done?
Government- A commitment to provide all citizens access to convenient and cost-effective recycling.
General Public- Americans need to change their “pre-disposal to dispose” and learn to recycle and re-use.
Industry- A commitment to take back 100% of the aluminum that it ships out in the form of recycling aluminum scrap.

Practical Steps to Recycle
1. “Make It Second Nature”. At Alcoa, we have coined a new slogan to drive our commitment to recycling. “Make It Second Nature” means making recycling an extension of our everyday lives. We all must change our behavior to make recycling habitual.

Just as we all grew up “taking out the trash”. Now, we must learn to “take out the recycling”.

2. Size for Success: UPSIZE your recycling containers. If you have curbside recycling in your neighborhood, tell your provider you need a BIGGER container to hold your recycled products. The 22 gallon cartons are TOO SMALL. Ask for a minimum of 50 to 95 rolling “tote container”.

If you must take your recycling to a drop-off center (hurray for your efforts), get more 22 gallon cartons. These cartons are inexpensive and durable. Community bin grant programs through leading recycling advocacy groups are available to assist those who cannot afford containers.

3. Change Curbside Practices. Ask your provider if single stream service is an option. Single stream means placing ALL recyclables in ONE container…no more separation of items.

4. Ask your trash provider about a "Pay As You Throw" program. This innovative trash scheme charges you only for what you dispose of and takes your recycling materials away for free. This is a good way to lower your trash bill while also diverting valuable recyclables back into productive use.

5. Combine drop-off recycling with other errands. We understand gas is expensive, and making a special trip to a drop center is not practical. Combine your recycling drop-off with other trips. Form recycling car pools with neighbors to take turns taking recyclables to the centers.

6. Ask your community to create more drop-off centers in closer proximity to your home.

7. If you don’t have curbside service, ask your community or trash provider to add it and point out to them that every ton of recycling diverted from a landfill saves the community the cost of dumping solid waste (tipping fees) and extends the life of the existing landfill.

8. Don’t accept conventional wisdom that recycling DOESN'T PAY for itself. Other materials besides aluminum are increasingly valuable and Material Recycling Facilities have more markets than ever for paper, plastic, rubber, and glass.

9. Donate recyclables. Did you know that recyclable materials that are donated are tax deductible? Besides the gratification of helping worthy causes in your community, you can reduce your tax bite to Uncle Sam in the process.

10. Sell recyclables. Did you know that aluminum cans are currently fetching near record prices? Local scrap dealers are happy to pay 70 to 80 cents/lb for consumer cans…that’s about 2 cents a piece.

Out of excuses

1400 Knoxville Tennessee residents no longer have an excuse not to recycle.

That's because they received their own free blue recycling bins this week in Knoxville.

The bin giveway was sponsored by Keep Knoxville Beautiful, Alcoa and Anheuser-Busch. It was kicked off on Earth Day (April 22).

Readers of this blog may know that Alcoa makes aluminum can sheet at its plant in Alcoa, Tennessee; and has a large corporate center in K'ville.

Rumors that Alcoa executives will personally collect the bins and recycle the cans are unsubstantiated.

If you're looking for yours, they still have some left. Here's a schedule of distribution dates and places.

Listen to your Pepsi

Next time you pop open a Pepsi can, see if it has something to tell you besides 'fzzzzzzz.' Pepsi is adding recycling messages to 750 million Pepsi and Diet Pepsi cans every month. Righteous sayings like "Recycle this can and save enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for four hours." Or "Recycling could save 95% of the energy used to make this can." And also, "The average person has the opportunity to recycle 25,000 cans in a lifetime."

That last one makes me thirsty.

This is a new campaign from Pepsi called "Have We Met Before?" that will let you know that the aluminum can you hold in your hand was in all likelihood, in a prior life, a can in someone else's hand. There's some karmic beauty to that, and you should perpetuate the cycle.

So drink, read, and obey.

Think of it as a big, flying beer can

We often get questions about recycling things besides beverage cans. Can you recycle, for example, a 747?

The answer is, mais oui, mon ami. In Chateauroux, France, at a recycling center near the town's airport, they have a machine that can bite a jumbo jet in half. Then it chomps the big pieces into smaller pieces, until other machines can sort through the pile of scrap and separate the aluminum, titanium, copper and other reusable stuff from the plastic tray tables, airsick bags, carpet and wrinkled magazines. Think of the battle scene aftermath in Transformers.

Two thirds of the reusable stuff from this process is aluminum. It turns back into (drum roll) ... aluminum ingots, which in turn may become bicycles, lawn chairs, and maybe even airplane parts. Voila!

You can read the whole story here.

Since a lot (OK, most) of the aluminum in these beasts comes from Alcoa, it's good to know that it's getting the right treatment when it can no longer fly. We (and the world) need it.

The Next Best Thing

It's said that pop artist Andy Warhol never threw anything away. In fact, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has a whole warehouse full of cardboard boxes of random stuff that Andy collected then put away -- the theory being that if you keep something long enough, it turns into art.

Now we're from Pittsburgh, Andy's home town, and we can tell you something about Andy: his family was (and still is) in the recycling business. Truth.

Now, this story IS going somewhere. It's going to Houston, actually, where another work of pop art, the Beer Can House, was rededicated last week. This spectacular landmark, the residence of the late John Milkovisch and his wife, is covered from foundation to rafters with carefully sculpted aluminum siding, cut from Our Favorite Product. John apparently had two things in common with Andy Warhol: an eye for the beauty of ordinary things, and the inability to throw any of them away.

You can see from the pictures that John used the can bodies for siding and created a shimmering wind chime curtain of the can ends. According to the Beer Can House web site, the unique siding not only gave the house a distinct look that Andy Warhol would have envied; it also protected the place from the elements and saved energy. Presumably the aluminum reflects the Houston sun and thus cut down on John's air conditioning bills.

John and his wife have both passed on, and the house had begun to fall into disrepair. A Houston folk art foundation acquired it and has just completed a full restoration, funded by contributions and donated (authentic) vintage beer cans.

Stop by and see the place if you can. From our point of view, if you're going to keep aluminum out of the recycling stream, you'd better have a darn good reason.

This would be it.

Baton Rouge bumps it up with CVP

The Curbside Value Partnership kicked off a campaign with Baton Rouge last November, and the data is now in. The first month of the campaign recognized the highest collection ever experienced. And that lift is being sustained. Three months into the campaign resulted in a 16.4% percent increase in recyclables.

The city is thrilled, including the Mayor's office. They have now exceeded their goal in switching to single stream by reaching a 51.4% increase in overall recycling tons from prior to the switch.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

Graden Gribble (pictured here with his teacher) isn’t exactly a baby. He’s a 5th grade student at Rocky Branch Elementary School in River Falls, Wisconsin, who won the state's Conservation Speaking Contest by talking about our favorite subject: recycling aluminum.

In his speech, “Recycle Aluminum…Why?” Graden outlined many reasons why we should recycle. For instance, recycling one aluminum can will save enough energy to power a 100-power light bulb for up to four hours -- or power a television set for almost three hours (be sure to do your homework first before trying this.)

Graden also talked about the need to keep our land clean. Like, rather than send your aluminum cans to the landfill…donate them to the River Falls Youth Hockey Association, so they can buy new jerseys. (smart idea, Graden!)

We thought this was a pretty cool speech. So cool, in fact that we sent Graden and his classmates 50 reusable aluminum drinking bottles and some Alcoa literature. (I’m sure they’ll use the drinking bottles … the literature may be another story.)

In 2007, Alcoa purchased and recycled nearly 1 million metric tons of aluminum, which went into a host of useful, recyclable products. (Math challenge to 5th graders: how much is that in pounds?)

Having a young aluminum ambassador like Graden on our side, we’ll sure to see those recycling figures rise.

Throwing it all away

EPA Waste Study 2006

The Big Picture on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and Where Recycling Fits In

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did its last comprehensive analysis of the trends in solid waste in 2006. Here are some graphics showing trends. In terms of waste, we continue to dispose of massive amounts...251 million short tons of "stuff". It works out to 4.6 pounds per person PER day. Recycling efforts have led to about 82 million tons of waste being diverted from landfill in 2006.

It is interesting to look at the various rates of recycling amongst representative materials and speculate as to why some materials have achieved greater or lesser success in being recycled.

Auto batteries- this is a good example where government, industry and the retail sectors got alignment early and made some tough decisions to deal with the core issue of lead disposal. Now, it's standard operating procedure for consumers and industrial users to exchange their obsolete
batteries for new ones along with payment of a disposal fee (not unlike what's imposed on spent tires). The fact that batteries aren't the most "portable" items also makes it more likely that people will do the right thing and dispose of them properly rather than chuck them into their
garbage cans.

Steel/Aluminum cans- the earliest pioneers in recycling, but both containers suffer from collection convenience these days......which is why various new hybrid schemes for curbside collection are being looked at. Aluminum remains the champion of residual market value amongst all products.

Plastics- also suffering from convenience of collection. Rapidly evolving technologies to re-use PET in usable food grade applications is a good news story here which bodes well for the commercial value of spent PET.

Glass- one of the big struggles for glass is the wholesale lack of commercial value of the recycling material and its difficulty in processing in single stream recylcing streams.

Greg Wittbecker

A shout out to Coke

We attended the National Recycling Coalition Annual Gala on Tuesday, February 12th at which Coca Cola was awarded the National Recycling Coalition's (NRC) Recycling Works award.

The NRC honored Coca-Cola for its assertive and broad approach to environmental sustainability. Coke's Sandy Douglas, in accepting the award has "set the bar" even higher for his company...announcing the following new goal....

Coca-Cola sets aluminum recycling goal
Atlanta Business Chronicle
The Coca-Cola Co is aiming to eventually recycle or reuse 100 percent of the aluminum beverage cans it sells in America. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) said the 100-percent goal is a long-term target.

One out of every two aluminum cans is recycled today, Coca-Cola said. Recycling aluminum is efficient and requires 95 percent less energy than creating aluminum from raw materials. It also reduces carbon emissions by 95 percent. Coca-Cola said it uses an average 60 percent recycled aluminum in its beverage cans.

Coca-Cola has previously set a goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of its PET plastic bottles. In 2007, it spent $60 million in a series of recycling initiatives, including support of RecycleBank's curbside collection program and the construction of the world's largest PET bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

In 2007, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. created Coca-Cola Recycling LLC to recover and recycle the packaging materials developed and used by the Coca-Cola system.

"We established Coca-Cola Recycling to help increase recycling rates in North America and to ensure that our system has ready access to recycled material," said John Burgess, president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola Recycling. "By the end of 2008, Coca-Cola Recycling will recycle more than 100 million pounds each of PET and aluminum."

Alcoa applauds Coca-Cola's aggressive approach to recycling. It dovetails with our recent call action to pushing the recycling rate on aluminum beverage cans up to 75% by 2015. This is an ambitious goal, requiring industry, government and the public to join forces to recapture another 400,000 metric tons of aluminum.

This campaign will require us to change behavior and simultaneously make the process much easier than it has been in the past. There are a host of exciting initiatives under way to work on both of these issues.

Posted by Greg Wittbecker

Take it to the curb. Then take it to the bank.

Americans are spoiled with the number of recycling options they have. In most major cities across the land, recycling is as simple as putting stuff in a bin that's separate from the rest of your garbage and hauling it to the curb once a week or so. What could be simpler? Yet according to these guys, only a third of our recyclables get recycled. (It's a little higher with a aluminum cans -- about half -- but still it makes you scratch your head.)

It's a cinch that altruism isn't working.

That's where these guys come in: RecycleBank, one of those bright new startups in Green Business, offers a cool new idea: you get paid to bin your recyclables and haul them to the curb. The American freakin' way!

How does it work? Corporate sponsors like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Petco, CVS, The North Face, Timberland and give you discounts. Real discounts. Like a coupon for $10 off your next bag of groceries, dvd purchase, or pair of (recycled) polypropylene underwear. RecycleBank sends you coupons based on how much you recycle.

Now, I'm sure you're asking, "how do they know?" Here's where it gets cool. If you're one of the lucky folks in a town served by RecycleBank (currently 35 pilot cities in the US Northeast) you get a smart garbage can that weighs your recyclables and ticks them off on your account when the truck pulls up.

This system has diverted 36 million tons of perfectly good, perfectly recyclable stuff from landfills so far, and they're planning to take it nationwide in the coming year.

Now you have no more excuses.

Couldn't have said it better ourselves

We're supposed to be about aluminum cans. But sometimes something really cool comes along and you have to step outside the box.

Apple's gotta-have Macbook Air is getting a lot of press for pushing the idea of what a laptop is supposed to be. So thin, you can mail one in a manila envelope. So light, you won't need a lot of postage.

So, so, so shiny.

Guess where that comes from.

"Among other highlights Tuesday, Jobs cited the fact that the new Macbook Air is clad in a fully recyclable aluminum case and stated that aluminum is one of the most recyclable materials on the market. "

Yeah, the emphasis is added. We're shameless. Read the whole report on the Macbook Air's introduction in WIRED online.

Get a bin and dive right in

Hot off the e-press is the latest edition of Bin Buzz, the monthly news mag of the five-year-old Curbside Value Partnership. If you're not familiar with CVP, it's a great source of support for people trying to promote curbside recycling in their communities.

You'd think that if it's as easy as hauling your recyclables out to the curb along with your other junk, everybody in America would do it, and the good people served by CVP would have nothing to do. Apparently, and unfortunately, not. So -- thank the earth gods for CVP.

To get one, download your own copy right here -- and nose around their web site while you're at it.