Have you ever sat and thought  “how does recycling actually work”?  Who actually knows where the items go once they leave your house in those really annoying special bins? Lets think about the process of aluminum can recycling as by far it is the most popular item people like to recycle.  Additionally, millions of beverages packaged in aluminum cans are consumed by people around the world each day.

Aluminum cans are collected from local recycling centers, community drop-off sites, charity collection sites, reverse vending machines or curbside recycling.  The aluminum cans are then gathered at a large, regional scrap processing plant.  The cans are reduced into dense 30-pound briquettes or 1,200-pound bales.  They are then shipped to aluminum companies for the melting stage.

Once received at the aluminum recycling company the condensed cans are shredded and crushed.   The cans are then stripped of any internal or external design or decoration by a burning process.  Small pieces of aluminum are then placed into melting furnaces.  The recycled metal is combined with new, virgin aluminum.   The melted aluminum is poured into ingots measuring 25-foot long and weighting 30,000.  The ingot feed directly into the rolling mills that compress the thickness from 20 inches to 1/100 of an inch thick per sheet.

The recycling of the aluminum continues as the metal is coiled and sent to can makers.  The can makers create can bodies which are then delivered to beverage companies to use in their production facilities.   The recycled can have been turned into new cans.