June 7, 2004
Can recycling rate keeps falling
Joe Truini
The aluminum can recycling rate has fallen for the sixth consecutive year as Americans have thrown away more than 1 trillion cans since the introduction of the container 40 years ago.
The Aluminum Association, the Can Manufacturers Institute and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries quietly released the 2003 recycling rate May 21.
According to the groups' numbers, Americans recycled 49.9 billion aluminum cans in 2003 for a recycling rate of 50.0 percent.
``We're pleased that the aluminum can is the world's most recycled beverage container, by units, pounds and percentage recycled,'' said Craig Eddy, Aluminum Association chairman.
Eddy also is the president and CEO of Coastal Aluminum Rolling Mills Inc.
The aluminum can is, by far, the most recycled consumer beverage container in the United States, he said. The recycling rate more than doubles that of other beverage containers, such as plastic bottles.
Aluminum beverage cans are 100 percent recyclable back into new beverage containers. Recycling 40 cans saves the energy equivalent to one gallon of gasoline. In 2003, Americans recycled enough aluminum cans to save more than 15 million barrels of oil.
But the used beverage can recycling rate has dropped for the sixth year in a row. Last year, Americans recycled 53.8 billion cans for a 53.4 percent recycling rate. In 1997, the last year the rate increased, recyclers collected 64.0 billion cans for a 66.5 percent recycling rate.
``Thirty years ago, we were full of optimism about the potential of recycling and so many other environmental programs,'' said Denis Hayes, organizer of the first national Earth Day in 1972
and president of the Bullitt Foundation. ``It is extremely disappointing to see the ground being lost, rather than gained, when it comes to aluminum cans.''
According to the Alexandria, Va.-based Container Recycling Institute, the aluminum can recycling rate has been declining since 1992. The group pegs the 2003 rate at 44 percent, which doesn't include the scrap cans U.S. recyclers import.
``This rate is the lowest it's been since 1980, but industry Web sites continue to trumpet numbers from the glory days when `two out of three' cans were recycled,'' said Pat Franklin, CRI executive director.
CRI estimates that Americans have thrown away 1.01 trillion aluminum cans since the industry started keeping records in 1972. Beverage makers introduced the first all-aluminum cans in 1964.
The number of cans wasted weigh in at 17.5 million tons and would be worth some $21 billion at today's market value, Franklin said.
“More importantly, throwing away cans that aluminum companies could recycle to make new ones is wasting energy and allowing the industry to build new aluminum smelters. Replacing the more than 1 trillion cans with new cans made from bauxite ore and electricity has produced more than 70 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Jenny Gitlitz, CRI research director.
``The cumulative environmental damage from the failure to recycle this metal is the real issue, not the buried tonnage or the dollar value of the wasted cans,'' Franklin said.
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