Recycling in Ohio

ALUMINUM RECYCLING

The environmental benefits of aluminum recycling are enormous. Fortunately, so are the economic benefits.

The advent of the aluminum beverage can in the 1960s helped spur the development of community recycling programs. Markets fluctuate over time, but traditionally the high market value of scrap aluminum has generated enough income to allow recycling programs to pay for other, less lucrative recycling services.

Recycling is as valuable to the aluminum industry as aluminum is to the recycling infrastructure. The capital costs for making aluminum from recycled material is far lower than the capital investment needed to derive aluminum from its source – bauxite ore. It takes 12 to 20 times more energy to make aluminum from bauxite than making it from recycled aluminum.

Because most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels, that energy savings translates into further conservation of natural resources and a significant reduction in pollution.. The Reynolds Metals Company estimates that producing recycled aluminum produces 95 percent less pollution than making aluminum from virgin ore.

Despite these benefits, only about 33 percent of America’s aluminum in 2001 came from recycled scrap and much of the credit goes to industry. While consumers recycled nearly 36 percent of their aluminum discards in 1990, that recycling rate had dropped to only 27.8 percent by the end of the decade.

Markets for recycled aluminum

Transportation, beverage cans and other packaging, and building construction are the top markets for the aluminum industry.

Transportation is the largest market for aluminum in the United States, accounting for 32.5 percent of domestic shipments in 2000. Almost two-thirds of that aluminum is used to make car and light truck components, and the vast majority of that material is recycled – up to 90 percent according to the Aluminum Association.

The use of aluminum in car parts also drives other conservation benefits: Lightweight aluminum body panels and engines, for instance, are used to improve the fuel efficiency of some cars.

While their prominent place in America’s recycling bins give beverage cans the most visible role in aluminum recycling, cans actually amount to less than 30 percent of post-consumer aluminum recycling.

Americans went through more than 100 billion aluminum cans in 2000, but recycled just 54.5 percent of them, according to the Container Recycling Institute. The aluminum can recycling rate has rollercoastered generally downward since 1992, when a 65 percent recycling rate was achieved.

Building construction is the third biggest market for aluminum, accounting for 13.1 percent of shipments in 1999. Aluminum doors, windows and siding are a major source of recycled aluminum, and recycled aluminum is increasingly used in their production.

Aluminum recycling in Ohio

Much of the aluminum Ohioans recycle is used by manufacturers in this state. Most of our aluminum beverage cans head first to primary aluminum smelters – plants that make aluminum mostly from raw bauxite ore – outside Ohio. There, recycled and virgin aluminum are blended into sheets that are sold to can makers. Ball Corporation, the largest maker of aluminum beverage cans, runs a plant in Findlay, Ohio.

Other post-consumer and industrial scrap aluminum, from metal filings to old lawn chairs and engine blocks, go to secondary aluminum smelters.

Wabash Alloy, the world’s largest producer of recycled aluminum, operates two of the world’s largest aluminum smelters in Ohio. Most of their product – molten aluminum – is sold to the automotive industry, primarily for use in making aluminum automotive engine blocks. Ohio is also home to dozens of small smelting operations which handle recycled material.

Ohio is also home to some innovations in the use of recycled aluminum in the construction industry, such as the production of 100 percent post-consumer roofing tiles.

Conservation benefits of aluminum recycling

Recycling an aluminum can saves the energy equivalent of six ounces of gasoline. In 2000, Americans recycled 54.8 million aluminum cans, saving the energy equivalent of 2.58 billion gallons of gasoline. Had we recycled the other 46 billion cans we used that year, we could have saved another 2.15 billion gallons of gas.

• Reducing energy consumption and use of virgin raw materials cuts pollution as well. In 1999, aluminum beverage can recycling.

• The energy saved by recycling one aluminum can is enough to run a television for three hours.

• In three months, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the commercial air fleet.

• Americans threw away half a million tons of aluminum last year, worth nearly $800 million.

• The energy needed to replace the aluminum cans discarded in the United States each year could power a city the size of Atlanta for a year.