If You're Going to Design Something New, Useful and Desirable, Please Make It Out of Recycled Aluminum Cans

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  Dale Mason

  a year ago

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  Matt is 100% correct while the recycling "story" makes everyone feel good the reality is prime/virgin materials in most cases is more cost effective than recycled and for public corporate America that is a very tough sell to shareholders. With that being said there is little incentive for companies to use recycled materials, the USA lacks a country/government wide recycling program due to the cost cand capacity, many smaller EU countries are great at it, they have the government support, capacity and programs to force industry to make to it work. We are getting better but there is no top down drive to make it feasible. I know mulitple plastic recycling facilities that failed over power cost/equipment maintenance etc.
  

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  Matt Edwards

  a year ago

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  Those 100 billion cans aren't sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting to be used, they are leaking into the environment due to lack of collection/recycling infrastructure. 

  There is already a huge and growing demand for aluminum, for example from cars, construction, and the 200 billion cans we're making! As such, all of the available recycled aluminum is already getting used.

  Any further products which require aluminum will just increase the amount we need to produce from bauxite, an incredibly harmful process as you've mentioned.

  Replacing plastics with aluminum is likely to dramatically increase the carbon footprint of your product - possibly even if you are replacing a non-recyclable plastic item with an infinitely recyclable aluminium alternative. So, if you're going to design something new, useful and desirable, please scientifically assess the environmental impact of different material options!

  
  

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