Pop quiz: Which is better for the environment, plastic bottles, or aluminum cans?
Aluminum cans are, of course. But that doesn't mean they're all good; the details can get a little complicated. To start off, let's look at this data visualization of how many aluminum cans us Earthlings go through in one year:
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(Note: The creator of the video, MetaBall Studios, cites their data sources as The World Counts and Web Packaging.)
So at press time we were at roughly 178 billions cans used this year, on our way to 200 billion by year's end.
The bad news is, those cans are a bitch to produce, at least from the planet's perspective. The bauxite mining required to produce aluminum "is harsh on the planet…leaving environmental destruction behind," Earth911 reports. "Bauxite mining contributes to habitat loss and water contamination, as well as a slew of other negative environmental impacts, like increased erosion."
The good news is, you can recycle the shit out of aluminum. As in, you can recycle it over and over again, infinitely, unlike plastics, which have a limited amount of times they can be recycled, depending on which type.
The bad news is, at this point we're only recycling about half of our aluminum cans. (Sciencing.com says 50%; Recycle Nation says 55%. Whatever the case, it appears to be growing--in author Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better, which was written in 2011, Leonard states that we were recycling 45%.)
The good news is, if we're producing 200 billion cans a year and only recycling half of them, that means there's 100 billion cans' worth of raw material just waiting to be used. And if there's demand for that product, there will be demand to recycle more of the cans. So if you're a designer with the power to spec that out, spec that out!
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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If You're Going to Design Something New, Useful and Desirable, Please Make It Out of Recycled Aluminum Cans
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.