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.