As one of the lightest and most plentiful metals in the Earth’s surface, aluminum has become the premier material for constructing beverage containers since its first use for this purpose in 1965. It is also one of the most environmentally and economically feasible products in use today for the purposes of recovering and recycling previously used aluminum containers and cans.

Aluminum deposits in the form of bauxite ore containing aluminum oxide are naturally occurring near the surface. The primary form of mining bauxite ore is through the process known as “Strip Mining”. Unlike tunnel mining, which takes place underneath the earth, strip mining requires the surface soil to be removed before the minerals are blasted or machine extracted. This raw bauxite ore is then crushed and sent to the refinery for the first of a two-part process to extract the usable pure aluminum metal.

To obtain the pure metal form for use, lime is added to the crushed ore then bathed in a caustic soda bath under pressure and heat to precipitate the granular oxide form out of the crushed ore. The white powdery metallic alumina is then sent to another factory to continue the smelting process. The smelter uses electrolytic reduction to melt the aluminum out of this powdery oxide. It is necessary to heat the mixture to between 920 to 980 degrees Celsius (1700 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit) in order to separate the pure aluminum metal out of this mix and into its useful form.

The electrical consumption of the process is so high that aluminum smelters are generally situated close to power generators. Some companies, such as Alcoa, also run their own hydro-electric and coal operated generating plants to help create the vast amounts of electrical energy needed to produce newly mined aluminum.

Fifty years ago this process required on average over 23 kilowatt hours of electrical energy (the rough equivalent of the energy needed to power two hundred and thirty 100-watt light bulbs) to produce a single kilogram (2.2 pounds) of aluminum metal. The most modern smelting equipment has the capability of cutting this figure nearly in half but is only slowly replacing the older smelters as they pass beyond their productive life span.

Aluminum mining produces over 50 million metric tons annually. The environmental impact of strip mining on the planet’s surface and the fossil fuel contamination of the air to create the electricity needed to smelt it from the ore, recycling aluminum becomes not only cost effective but less destructive of the planet itself.

In contrast it requires only 5% of the electrical energy required of new metal to melt recycled aluminum cans back into the pure, reusable metal. It does not require stripping more of the land away nor do you have to find ways of safely disposing of the toxic runoff of the waste from the original bauxite ore refining. Aluminum does not degrade and can be used repeatedly in recovering used containers and creating new ones ready to be placed back on the market.