Recycling (from the "Optimum Can Size" Discussion)

Quote: Wizard

That's getting off topic a bit, but I will say I knew someone who worked for Republic Services, who pick up the trash and recycling in Las Vegas. She said, despite getting free material to recycle, the only thing they turn a profit on is cardboard. I think it could be said that recycling requires more energy than making a fresh can. I'd be interested to see an unbiased study of the pros and cons of recycling

I wanted to respond to this, but didn't want to hijack, so here we are.

I knew someone in college who did recycling collection for the University's physical plant back when I was in school. She said that the only thing they made profit on was aluminum. They broke even on paper. She said that they could use the profits on aluminum to also recycle one more material: glass or plastic, but not both. They chose glass.

Now granted, this was 20 or so years ago, so industrial recycling processes are much different now. Plus, I'd imagine there is much more demand for cardboard out there these days with Amazon, etc. doing home deliveries. So, I could see where recycling cardboard may now more lucrative than aluminum.

But, I can't quite wrap my head around not making a profit recycling aluminum, especially with the rising costs of materials over the last 10-15 years. I know at work, we sell scrap aluminum to the local metal recycler.

But yeah, I would also like to see a study on recycling and its profitability. I sometimes get the feeling that my curbside recycling actually goes straight to the landfill!

Oops - Duplicate post

You can take your aluminum cans to a metal scrapper and get paid for them. I think it comes out to something like $0.01 per can or less in most areas.

But that can certainly add up pretty quickly along a recycling route.

Quote: gamerfreak

You can take your aluminum cans to a metal scrapper and get paid for them. I think it comes out to something like $0.01 per can or less in most areas.

But that can certainly add up pretty quickly along a recycling route.

Or you can drive them to Michigan and get ten cents each.

I don't know much about this topic, but I think Republic Services may not have turned a profit on aluminum is they had to separate it from the plastic and other metals. When I knew the woman I quoted, we Las Vegas separated our stuff into bins as follows:

White: Paper
Blue: Glass
Red: All plastic and metal

However, when the truck came to pick up recyclables, it seemed to me they just emptied all the bins in the truck, letting everything get mixed up. About six months ago, they came up with a new single container for everything. Either way, there must have been some expense at separating the aluminum from everything else.

On a tangent, all of us with some grey hair can probably remember when most people saved their aluminum cans, because it was worth the fuss to do so. Maybe it was because I lived in California and the state subsidized the recycling of it, which sounds like the kind of thing they would go for there, but not Nevada and Maryland. Anyway, I can't recall anyone selling their aluminum cans in many years. Why is that?

Quote: billryan

Or you can drive them to Michigan and get ten cents each.

FOR ONE CAN??????

I'm in the wrong business.

Be careful not to exceed 10,000 cans per trip.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/07/29/dont-bring-empty-bottles-into-michigan-you-might-go-to-jail/

Aluminum is very energy intensive to refine. It is found in nature as alumina -aluminum oxide -and the binding energy on the oxygen is very high. So, it requires a lot of energy to convert alumina to aluminum metal. The first major aluminum plant in the US was the Alcoa plant in the town of Alcoa, Tennessee near Oak Ridge Tennessee. Basically, the entire TVA power system was designed to bring enormous amounts of cheap electricity (hydropower and coal) to Oak Ridge* to separate uranium during WW2, and after the war this enabled the commercial refining of aluminum metal for commercial applications. Aluminum was not widely used until this happened.

So, recycling aluminum metal makes economic and environmental sense. It is why people rip out aluminum guardrails and sell them as scrap.

*At one point, Oak Ridge used 10% of all the electricity in the U.S.

I think some people would pay the difference to have their things recycled. At some point this will change when things reach their peak and are too costly to obtain. There could be trillions buried in our landfills, but wonder what contamination there might be from things like lead.