ALUMINUM RECYCLING
Aluminum is produced from Bauxite, a clay-like ore which is the most common element in the earth’s crust. It takes 4 tons of ore to produce 1 ton of aluminum.
95% of the energy necessary to turn bauxite ore into metal is SAVED when new metal is made from recycled aluminum instead of from raw materials. Recycling aluminum not only saves energy, it conserves raw materials and reduces the need for power plants and foreign energy.
The recycling of one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100 watt bulb burning for 3 ½ hours. By recycling more than 1.6 billion pounds of used cans in 1989, the aluminum industry saved enough energy to meet the residential electric needs of a city the size of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for about six years. More than 12 billion kilowatt hours of electricity were saved in 1995. That’s the energy equivalent to some 20 million barrels of oil.
In 1970, six aluminum beverage cans were recycled for each person in the United States. In 1986, 138 cans were recycled for each person in the United States, an increase of 2300 percent. In 1989 about 61% of the aluminum cans produced - over 49 billion cans- were recycled, and in 1994, Americans recycled 64.7 billion aluminum cans. Since 1972, recycling has diverted more than 14 million tons of aluminum cans from landfills. These 660.1 billion beverage cans, placed end-to-end, could stretch to the moon some 290 times.
The aluminum can is 100% recyclable. It can be recycled and reused over and over again in a never-ending process of resource and energy conservation. Used aluminum cans are often recycled and back on store shelves in the form of new beverage containers in as little as 90 days.
Aluminum is one of three materials that are mandated for recycling according to the NJ Mandatory Statewide Source Separation and Recycling Act, P.L. 1987 c.102.
If you have any questions, please call Val Weiss, WPUNJ’s
Recycling Coordinator at ext. 3248
or send him an E-mail @ weissv@wpunj.edu