What are the benefits of aluminum recycling?

Without a doubt, the most important benefit of aluminum recycling is that it can be recycled an infinite number of times, making it the ideal material to meet the needs of both demanding industries and those wishing to preserve the environment in general.

In addition to being infinitely recyclable, aluminum is also fully recyclable, with all metal able to be melted and reformed repeatedly without losing any of its material qualities. In fact, since the initial production of aluminum in the late 19th century, it is claimed that around three-quarters of all the material produced then is still in use today!

Did you know that aluminum recycling is also incredibly energy-efficient? Recycling just one ton of aluminum actually saves up to nine tons of CO2 emissions that would otherwise be released into the environment. Furthermore, aluminum recycling uses considerably less energy than that required to manufacture primary aluminum. In fact, recycling existing aluminum uses only 5% of the energy needed to produce primary aluminum. Shockingly, that's the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing almost one million vehicles from the road for an entire year!

By recycling more aluminum, we can also help avoid the need to mine new bauxite ore, which is used in the production of new aluminum.

In the UK alone, eight billion aluminum cans containing beverages such as soft drinks and fruit juices, as well as food items, are sold each year. If you consider that all eight billion of these cans could be recycled over and over again, you can quickly recognize how much energy and raw materials can be saved in the process.

It is said that the entire aluminum recycling process for a drinks can, from recycling it to when it is ready for resale in shops and supermarkets, takes just two months. That means that over the course of a single year, each aluminum can could be recycled seven or eight times, saving enough energy to make 160 new aluminum cans.

Better still, aluminum's impressive structural integrity, regardless of how many times it's recycled, means it's a highly suitable material for high-end applications. For example, aluminum previously used as an aesthetically pleasing facade on a building can be recycled for use in a vehicle engine without any reduction in the material's quality.