Recycle! Or Why We Should All Be Concerned About Aluminum

I rescued 50 soda cans the other day.

Allow me to explain: My workplace has a weekend shift, but there are no cleaners over these two days. Hence, the wastebaskets tend to be pretty full by the time my shift begins on a Sunday night/early Monday morning (yes, I work third shift). And I was not at all happy with what I saw last Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. when I walked in: Aluminum cans in every single wastebasket in the place.

Now, I'm not about to trashpick in front of my co-workers, so the next night, late Monday going on early Tuesday, I made a point of secretly going through the bags of refuse in the dumpsters — where it's pretty dark and no-one can see me — to recover every can that I knew would be in them. Sound crazy? Who would do this sort of thing without even being paid to do so? Alas, I guess I'm just an altruist when it comes to the environment.

But there's another point to this, and it's that aluminum is the most easily recycled material. I hate to see it wasted. The aluminum industry keeps growing and as the future rolls on, there's going to be more of this metal around than ever before. I once mentioned to my wife that we should invest in aluminum stocks, knowing full well what a boon this material is. Even The Financial Times dedicated an entire business section in their paper to aluminum last year.

Yet, so much of this useful and much-in-demand metal goes to landfill. I ask you: Does this make any sense whatsoever? People, being the dimwits they are, just don't think. They sit at their desks, sipping their soda and, as soon as it's finished, drop the can into the wastebasket and don't think twice about what a phenomenal and tragic waste that amounts to.

Aluminum can be recycled 100 times over and it will still be as good and as strong as it was the day it was mined from the bauxite. Would you feel any less safe flying on a plane that you knew was made from recycled aluminum? I wouldn't and I have no reason to, and most planes are made from recycled aluminum these days. Besides, the aluminum industry, despite its prestige and power, is one of the least environmentally friendly. It uses a lot of energy, emits a lot of carbon dioxide, leaves a lot of waste from the mined bauxite behind, and can scar the landscape. Although the industry is trying to cut down on the environmental impact of processing virgin aluminum, the fact is recycled aluminum uses only 5 percent of the energy needed to process "fresh" aluminum and is virtually waste-free. And the aluminum industry, as long as they have enough of the metal to provide, should be none the wiser about whether it's "fresh" or recycled. They are still going to profit either way.

Article Author: Mark Edward Manning

Mark Edward Manning grew up in Boston, MA and now lives in London, England. He wrote commentaries for The Boston Herald in the mid 1990s.

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