Aluminum Can Recycling Lowest in 15 Years

Container and Packaging Recycling UPDATE Spring/Summer 2002

Energy wasted could meet electricity needs of 2.7 million households WASHINGTON, DC - In 2001, more aluminum cans were littered, landfilled or incinerated than were recycled. Last year's rate of 49.5% was 15 percentage points below the all-time high of 65% reached in 1992. CRI estimates that the 50.7 billion cans wasted last year squandered the energy equivalent of 16 million barrels of crude oil, or enough energy to supply 2.7 million American homes with electricity for a year.

The Aluminum Can Recycling Rate, 1990-2001: Two methods of measurement
Graph prepared using data from the Aluminum Association
and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Container Recycling Institute, 2002.

Because the energy costs of making new cans from virgin materials are high, can makers want all the scrap they can get. In 1997, the aluminum industry, led by ALCAN, launched an expensive public relations campaign designed to achieve a 75% recycling goal by 2001. Not only was this goal not met last year, but the recycling rate was the lowest in fifteen years, and was 10 percentage points below the rate achieved in 1997-when the 75% goal was announced.

The aluminum industry continues to inflate recycling rates, publishing a recycling rate of 55.4% in 2001. They do this by counting imported scrap cans that were recycled in the United States, but not sold and consumed here (6.4 billion in 2001). The 49.2% rate published by CRI is derived using the U.S. EPA's standard formula for determining recycling rates, using data from the aluminum industry and trade data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

New report on can wasting

WASHINGTON, DC - CRI has just published an exciting new report: "Trashed Cans: The Global Environmental Impacts of Aluminum Can Wasting in America." Written by Senior Research Associate Jenny Gitlitz, "Trashed Cans" details the growth of aluminum can wasting over the past three decades, and documents the steady decline in the UBC recycling rate over the past nine years.

In 1972, Americans recycled only 15% of the used aluminum cans (UBC's) they bought, and wasted about 146,000 tons of UBC's. By 1987, recycling had grown to 50%, while wasting had also grown-to 650,000 tons per year.

UBC recycling peaked at 65% in 1992, but has since declined steadily to 49.2% in 2001.

Last year, according to the report, 759,000 tons of cans were trashed - more metal than was used in all trans portation applications nationally. Gitlitz illustrates how prodigious this waste is: for example, since 1990, Americans wasted over 7 million tons of cans: enough to build over 300,000 Boeing 737 jet airplanes. Had it been recycled, this metal would have had a market value of about $7 billion.

The report documents the impacts of producing the virgin materials and energy needed to replace these wasted cans with new cans. From Australia to Brazil, Jamaica, and Guyana, bauxite strip-mined for aluminum production causes soil erosion, water quality degradation, habitat loss, and human dislocation. Vast hydroelectric dams built to feed aluminum smelters have wreaked environmental and social havoc, Gitlitz writes, in places as diverse as British Columbia, Quebec, Ghana and Norway, while proposed hydro development for aluminum smelting now threatens many other regions.

Greenhouse gasses that contribute to global climate change are also produced during virgin aluminum manufacturing. About 3 million tons were emitted last year just to replace the 50 billion cans wasted. Other air pollutants contribute to smog, acid rain, and fluoride deposition.

The growth in wasting has several causes, including a declining financial incentive to recycle cans, and an increase in "away-from-home" consumption. Gitlitz documents a 70 to 95% recovery rate for cans and bottles in the nation's ten "bottle bill" states, and illustrates the energy savings that could accrue from adopting national deposit legislation.

The 53-page report includes 17 pages of detailed appendices, and is available from CRI using the below order form.

order online at: http://www.container-recycling.org/publications/order.htm