The share of aluminum containers that were recycled in the U.S. in 2011 reached the highest point in 14 years, as can makers sought to reduce costs, a group of trade organizations said Monday.
Recycled aluminum represented a 65.1% share of reported U.S. shipments of aluminum beverage cans last year, the most since 1997, the Aluminum Association, the Can Manufacturers Institute and the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries said in an email to Dow Jones Newswires. That is up from 58.1% in 2010 and the third-highest rate in industry data beginning in 1972.
Making aluminum is an energy-intensive business, typically requiring fuel oil, natural gas and electricity, among other materials. Using recycled metal requires about 95% less energy, according to industry estimates.
Recycling peaked in the U.S. at 67.9% in 1992, Aluminum Association spokesman James Lewis said, and remained above the 60% threshold through the 1990s. The rate declined in the early 2000s, though, hitting a decade low in 2003 at 50%. The industry is targeting a goal of a 75% recycle rate.
The recycling rate in 2011 represented about 61 billion cans, compared to reported U.S. manufactured can shipments of 93.6 billion cans. Imports of used beverage cans by recyclers climbed by 26% last year, to the equivalent of 11 billion cans.
The amount of energy saved from recycling cans in 2011 translates to the energy equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of crude oil, Allison Buchanan, a communications manager for Alcoa Inc.'s (AA) packaging division and chair of the Aluminum Association's can committee, said in a statement. "These savings can be realized over and over again due to the infinite recycalbility inherent in aluminum cans."
Aluminum cans can go from the recycling bin to melting and manufacture into newly formed cans in as little as 60 days.
豫公网安备41010502003434号