Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, but Americans throw out millions of tons of it every year — mainly aluminum cans and other post-consumer scrap. At the same time, US can-recycling rates are falling drastically behind several countries. We went to New York City to meet a career can recycler and to Michigan to visit companies revolutionizing post-consumer aluminum recycling.
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00:00Aluminum is one of the most recyclable materials on Earth.
00:05It can be melted down and reshaped over and over, and still be good as new.
00:10It sounds simple, it's not.
00:14But the U.S. recycles less than half of its aluminum cans, leaving nearly $800 million
00:21of valuable scrap in landfills every year.
00:25Other countries, like Germany and Brazil, recycle nearly all of them.
00:32So why is the U.S. so far behind?
00:35And what will it take to catch up to the rest of the world?
00:41America actually pioneered aluminum recycling back in 1904, when two of the first facilities
00:46in the world opened in Chicago and Cleveland.
00:50The push to recycle aluminum skyrocketed during the World Wars, when the U.S. government needed
00:54the material for weapons, armor, and airplanes.
00:58As a Girl Scout, 15-year-old Carol Davis has been saving every scrap of tinfoil she can
01:04find.
01:06Americans donated their household scrap in droves.
01:09Transpots, old aluminum for this nation's defense.
01:14After that, scrapyards, where people could exchange their old metal goods for money,
01:18began to pop up throughout the U.S.
01:21And in the 1970s, cities started to implement curbside recycling programs.
01:26Over the next three decades, many adopted the big blue bin, where you could throw all
01:31recyclables in unsorted, a model still very common today.
01:36The lack of sorting is a big reason why materials aren't recycled more often.
01:42But since we started putting everything together for decades in one bin for the sake of convenience,
01:48we really trashed our recycling system.
01:53Separating it is expensive and time-consuming, and not every city has centers that can handle
01:57it.
01:59The mess of glass, paper, aluminum, and all kinds of plastic often gets contaminated by
02:04food, trash, and packaging that appears recyclable, but isn't.
02:10We actually don't have one American recycling system, so we have nearly 10,000 different
02:15recycling systems that are all operating on a shoestring budget.
02:21Over 20-ish years, the U.S. exported most of its so-called recyclable waste to China,
02:26a grand total of more than $11 billion worth of materials.
02:31The country would import almost any kind of waste unsorted, which meant American recycling
02:36centers did not need to prioritize sorting infrastructure.
02:40But in 2018, China cut back on its recycling imports.
02:44That left local governments and recyclers holding the bag, trying to figure out what
02:49the heck to do with all of these materials that it turns out weren't really recyclable.
02:55Worse yet, as of 2024, a quarter of American households don't have access to recycling
03:01of any kind.
03:02Meanwhile, all kinds of aluminum pile up in scrapyards like this one in Michigan.
03:09This is post-consumer scrap, a mix of wires, window frames, and junk cars.
03:16And while nearly everything in this scrapyard will be recycled, about 2.4 million metric
03:20tons of post-consumer scrap ended up in landfills in 2018, potentially worth hundreds of millions.
03:28This kind of waste is usually shredded with large machines, like this one, that can break
03:32down any item, including whole fridges and cars.
03:36It'll be pulverized and be fist-sized pieces within a matter of seconds.
03:42It's a pretty impressive process.
03:46Then a series of magnets, x-rays, and heat separates metals, plastics, and textiles into
03:51different piles.
03:53The challenge here is that aluminum is often alloyed, so it's mixed with other metals like
03:58copper or zinc.
04:00And there are almost no facilities in the U.S. that have the tech to separate those.
04:05The company that owns this yard, Patnas, partnered with a Norwegian manufacturer called
04:10Hydro to bring a brand new tech to the U.S.
04:14It can separate aluminum alloy by alloy at scale.
04:18This tech can handle more than 10 metric tons per hour.
04:22That's 30% more than similar machines in the U.S.
04:25If you're only able to operate at one, two, three tons per hour, it is not economically
04:31viable.
04:33You'd have to have many of these installations, and they are very expensive.
04:38The separated alloys go to Hydro's new $150 million facility in Kasopolis, Michigan.
04:46So what we have here is a pile of shredded post-consumer scrap.
04:50This is what I recognize.
04:52If you live in a house in the United States that has an asphalt shingle roof, you have
04:57this around the border of your roof.
04:59It's drip edge.
05:00The main innovation here is how they're using this de-lacquering kiln.
05:05It uses hot air to burn any paint or lacquer contaminating the alloys, but leaves the metal
05:10in solid form.
05:13That basically burns the organics off of the scrap.
05:16Those organics, we don't just vent them to the atmosphere.
05:19We actually capture them and use them as a fuel source to help melt the metal.
05:26A similar type of kiln has been used in can recycling for decades.
05:30But Hydro is one of just a few U.S. companies using it to turn low-quality scrap into high-quality scrap.
05:38I would estimate that we are looking at single-digit numbers for facilities in the U.S. capable
05:43of removing the lacquer or the paint from the finished goods product.
05:48Hydro also buys piles of pre-consumer scrap directly from companies.
05:53Every time a manufacturer uses aluminum to make a product, it creates metal shavings
05:58and trimmings like these long thin pieces.
06:01In the U.S., the majority of this comes from cars and construction-related industries.
06:05And because it arrives relatively clean, it's pretty easy to process.
06:09About 90% of it gets recycled every year.
06:12But pre-consumer scrap still needs to go into this furnace, which melts the alloys at 750
06:17degrees Celsius.
06:22The remaining impurities, called dross, rise to the top.
06:27The dross is scraped off with a large, spatula-like tool called a skimming machine.
06:34This is where Hydro mixes both pre- and post-consumer scrap.
06:38Next, workers brush a protectant onto these graphite rings, which will form the final
06:44product, 7-meter-long aluminum ingots.
06:48Think of a log.
06:50Instead of being made of wood, it's made of aluminum.
06:53And that's what we produce here in Cosopolis.
06:56Workers pour the molten metal into the casting table's troughs and test it for quality.
07:06Then it flows through the graphite rings, where it instantly cools and solidifies.
07:12The ingots are sprayed with water to further cool them down.
07:17These are usually sold to car companies and used to make auto parts, like trim pieces
07:21and the chassis.
07:23The Hydro team casts more than 310 metric tons of ingots per day.
07:30Workers clean up excess aluminum on the casting equipment, which will be recycled in another
07:34batch.
07:36Building a facility entirely dedicated to recycling post-consumer aluminum is expensive,
07:42so Hydro is investing in places where there's plenty of sorted scrap and enough demand to
07:47buy their final products.
07:49For the company, those places are Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, and now the U.S.
07:54After the ingots are cut down to size, workers like Keith Bonner do a final quality check
08:00using an ultrasonic tool.
08:03It's looking for cracks and flaws by sending sound waves into the material and then searching
08:09for that sound wave to come back.
08:11Hydro says its recycling process uses 95% less energy than it takes to make new aluminum.
08:19We make the metal out of this red rock called bauxite.
08:23Processing it involves chemicals, steam, and a lot of energy.
08:28Refining one metric ton uses roughly the same amount of electricity needed to power the
08:33average American home for a year and a half.
08:36And one of the most common uses of the metal is the aluminum can.
08:42Some of the biggest contributors to can recycling are people like Josefa, who lives in New York,
08:47one of 10 states that pay people to return their cans.
08:58On a really good day, she and her partner Pedro can earn as much as $300 for 10 hours
09:04of work.
09:05But most days, they'll make about half of that.
09:17By the end of the day, the bags are almost as tall as she is.
09:21Josefa caches in her containers at Sure We Can, a collection center in Brooklyn.
09:27She gets five cents for each can and plastic or glass bottle.
09:30So she needs 20 for $1, 100 for $5, and this huge stack for just about $85.
09:40But only 10 states in the whole country have these laws known as bottle bills, which incentivize
09:45recycling with money.
09:49In New York, consumers pay a five-cent deposit on top of the price of a drink.
09:54You'll get that five cents reimbursed if you return the container to a store, which will
09:58deliver it to a distributor to get back its nickel, plus a three-and-a-half-cent handling
10:02fee.
10:03If a can ends up in a landfill and no one collects that nickel, either the state or
10:08the beverage distributor keeps it.
10:10In 2021, New York's unclaimed deposits totaled $139 million.
10:16The state kept 80% of that.
10:19About 16% of the unclaimed deposits went to New York's Environmental Protection Fund,
10:24and the other 64% went to the state's General Fund.
10:28A lot of people don't take advantage of the deposit system.
10:31So in New York City, many consider canners an essential part of making recycling work.
10:38Recyclers with Sure We Can collected 12 million containers in 2023, enough to fill an estimated
10:4447 garbage trucks.
10:47But they can only get paid if the containers were once filled with soda, beer, energy drinks,
10:53or water, not tea, wine, or liquor.
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