Trillions of Cans

One Trillion Aluminum Beverage Cans Trashed in America from 1972-2003

Recycling rate at lowest point in 24 years.

Recently released data* reveal that over one trillion aluminum beer and soda cans have been thrown in the trash—not the recycling bin—since Americans began buying these cans more than thirty years ago. The trillion wasted beverage cans weigh in at 17.5 million tons—a quantity of scrap aluminum worth about $21 billion at today's market prices.

Over the last four decades, the damages from aluminum manufacturing and associated infrastructure include thousand of square miles of habitat loss on every major continent, the displacement of tens of thousands of indigenous people, and the release of tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gasses and other toxic air and water pollutants.

While we are steadily trashing millions of tons of cans that could be used to make new cans and other aluminum products, multi-national companies like Alcoa and Alcan are forging ahead to build new aluminum smelters in pristine environments all over the world, including Brazil, Australia, Mozambique, and Iceland.

If we recycled 85% of our cans instead, as we could with a national beverage container deposit law, or "bottle bill," we could save about 600 thousand tons of aluminum metal annually —eliminating the need to build one or two brand new aluminum smelters.

*The first disposable all-aluminum cans were marketed in 1964, but t he Aluminum Association, an industry trade group, only began collecting sales and recycling data in 1972. Since 1990, the Container Recycling Institute has used U.S. Department of Commerce data to adjust the Aluminum Association recycling rate to account for imported scrap cans (cans not originally sold in the United States). This adjustment is consistent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Solid Waste’s method of calculating recycling rates for other materials in the wastestream. Details on the calculation methods, total number of cans wasted, and environmental impacts cited here are available from CRI. See "Two methods of calculating the aluminum recycling rate."

Press Release [HTML] [doc 212 KB] | Graphs | Trillionth Can Fact Sheet [pdf 347 KB]

Aluminum Can Recycling Rates (1990-2004)


The U.S. aluminum can recycling rate dropped to 45.1% in the year 2004—
twenty percentage points below the 1992 peak of 65%.

NOTE: Recycling rates have been adjusted to reflect imported used beverage cans recycled in the U.S. but not produced or sold in the United States. In a letter dated April 7, 1999, Elizabeth Cotsworth, Acting Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste wrote, “…the methodology suggested by the Container Recycling Institute in determining aluminum can recycling rates is consistent with the recycling measurement methodology used by the EPA.” For an explanation of how these rates were calculated, please see our "Calculating Aluminum Recycling Rates" page.

Calculating the Aluminum Can Recycling Rate

CRI's methodology for calculating the aluminum can recycling rate differs from that employed by the Aluminum Association, an industry trade organization. In computing the UBC recycling rate, which is derived by dividing the number of cans recycled by the number of cans sold (i.e., those available for recycling), the Aluminum Association includes domestic and imported scrap cans in the numerator, but only domestically-produced (and sold) new cans in the denominator. This methodology produces an artificially high recycling rate because it includes cans which were not originally sold on the U.S. market. By deducting the 11.4 billion imported scrap cans from the numerator, CRI has derived a domestic recycling rate of 54.2% for 2011.

Before 1990, so few scrap cans were imported from abroad that their inclusion in the numerator did not significantly affect the recycling rate derived. In 1991, just 2 billion scrap cans were imported only 2.2% of the number of cans sold domestically. By 2011, however, that number had grown to 11.4 billion imported scrap cans, or over 12% of the number of cans sold domestically.

In other words, the effective gap between the recycling rate derived by the Aluminum Association and that derived by CRI is much wider now than it was in 1991, even though the recycling rates for 1991 and 2011 are very similar according to the Aluminum Association (62.4% and 65.1% respectively).

The Aluminum Association has included imported cans in its recycling rate since it began reporting in 1972. In the last several years, the steady increase in imports has become a more impactful factor to the overall recycling rate in the United States.

In a letter dated April 7, 1999, Elizabeth Cotsworth, Acting Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste wrote, "the methodology suggested by the Container Recycling Institute in determining aluminum can recycling rates is consistent with the recycling measurement methodology used by the EPA."  The EPA has also amended their own recycling statistics accordingly.

Calculating the 2011 Used Aluminum Can Recycling Rate

   

The Aluminum Association method:

Weight of scrap cans collected
(includes exported and imported UBCs):
1,762 million pounds
Multiplied by the average number of cans per pound: 34.6
cans per pound  
Equals the number of cans recycled (includes cans exported for recycling): 60.9 billion cans (numerator)
Divided by the number of new cans [made and] shipped [in U.S.]: 93.6 billion cans (denominator)
   
  The UBC Recycling Rate:
  Cans collected [recycled] 60.9 =
  Cans shipped 93.6 65.1%
 

The Container Recycling Institute/
Environmental Protection Agency method:

The number of collected cans recycled domestically and exported: 60.9 billion cans  
Minus the number of imported scrap cans: 11.4 billion cans  
Equals the # of cans recycled that were sold in the U.S.: 49.5 billion cans (numerator)
   
New cans made and shipped in the U.S.: 93.6 billion cans  
Plus new imported unfilled cans: 1.4* billion cans  
Minus new exported unfilled cans: 3.7* billion cans  
Equals the # of cans available for recycling in the U.S.: 91.3 billion cans (denominator)
   
  The UBC Recycling Rate:
Cans recycled that were originally sold in the U.S. 49.5 =
Domestic cans available for recycling: 91.3 54.2%

*The most current statistics available for these figures is from 2010.

   

How CRI calculates the U.S. aluminum can recycling rate

CRI calculates the aluminum recycling rate differently than does the Aluminum Association.  The AA counts all of the cans recycled in the United States -- even the used cans that have been imported from other countries specifically to be recycled.  CRI leaves these used beverage containers (UBC's) out of its calculations, contributing to a more accurate representation of the recycling rate in the USA.  CRI's method has been approved by the EPA.   The links below give more details about the calculation of aluminum can recycling rates.

Calculating the Aluminum Can Recycling Rate:
An explanation

Graph: Aluminum Can Recycling Rate: 2 methods of measuring (1990-2010)
Graph of the decline in the recycling rate from 1990-2010 according to CRI's measurement method, contrasted with the Aluminum Association's method

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New beverage container deposit program bills. Expansion and repeal proposals. Sales, redemption rate and waste trends. Refillable bottle infrastructure. Extended producer responsibility.

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This counter represents the number of beverage cans and bottles that have been landfilled, littered and incinerated in the US so far this year
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