There's No Excuse For Not Recycling Aluminum And Steel Cans
Each and every year thousands of tons of trash is thrown into landfills. Though we are in no immediate danger of running short on landfill space, this is expensive in terms of time, space, and energy invested, along with the sheer waste of materials that will not ever be used again. So, consider the reasons below for keeping your aluminum and steel cans out of landfill sites by recycling them instead.
- Aluminum that has been recycled is back in use again within a couple of months. In contrast, it would take 200-500 years for that metal to break down naturally if were just thrown away.
- Recycling is about more than just material savings, it is also about energy consciousness. Every aluminum can which is recycled saves enough energy to run a television for 3 hours.
- Metal cans can be recycled for cash at lots of places. Various states offer five cents for each can given to them, and some recycling centers pay anywhere between fifty cents and two dollars for every pound of cans recycled.
- Recycled aluminum and steel are have exactly the same composition as ‘new’ aluminum and steel. Recycled metals are simply melted down and mixed into lots to make new products.
- Every day, Americans recycle around 100,000 cans per minute. The majority of that figure is a result of particular communities working hard on special projects, and that is something that you should encourage those in your neighborhood to take up, as recycling can really help with bringing a community together.
- The 100,000,000 ‘new’ steel cans produced every day contain 25% recycled materials. That is the equivalent of 25 million reclaimed cans vs. 75 million completely new cans. If people recycled more frequently, that number would soon jump to 50-50 and a great deal of energy and resources would be saved.
- The United States presently uses steel which is more than 65 percent recycled. That is not too bad, but it could definitely be higher. This proportion would go up significantly if more people were aware that they can recycle their steel cans.
- There are multiple can-crushing machines available, including some that can be made at home for almost no cost. This removes the a commonly used excuse that recycling cans takes up too much space.
—
http://www.cancrusher.org.uk is a site offering information about recycling aluminum and steel cans.