Victoria Advocate: Make a Big Impact with Little Effort
Filed under: Earth911 - May 13, 2009
By Meridith Byrd
Are you looking for an easy way to make a big difference? If so, then I have an idea for you: recycle your cans. These lightweight little guys pack a big punch when it comes to recycling and energy conservation.
According to Earth911.com, the aluminum can is the most valuable beverage container to recycle. So this week’s installment of “What You Can Recycle Here in Victoria,” will feature aluminum, tin and steel cans.
The city collection centers require that all cans be rinsed (no need to remove the labels), and no aerosol or propane containers or appliances are accepted. I’ll devote future columns to recycling appliances and electronics.
If your household is like mine, you go through a lot of cans. Metal cans contain everything from green beans to soft drinks to cat food. All of these cans are able to be recycled into new products.
Why is metal recycling so important, anyway? Simply put, these items take a very long time to break down naturally in a landfill. Estimates vary, but the range is from about 100 years for tin and steel to approximately 500 years for aluminum.
In addition, the energy savings are phenomenal. A quick web search reveals statistics repeated on a number of sites: recycled tin and steel cans require up to 74 percent less energy than making them using new materials, and the number jumps to 95 percent when it comes to aluminum.
The sustainability of metal is another encouraging reason to recycle. Recycled metal keeps its strength, so it is able to be made into new products over and over again. Aluminum cans are made into more aluminum cans and other products, and recycled steel is used in cans, car parts, and home appliances, to name a few. Why throw something away when it can be reused so often?
Packaging has gotten a lot of press recently for being wasteful and contributing to the enormous amount of garbage produced each year. The good news is that companies and industries are becoming aware of this concern and working to lessen the packaging of their products.
Aluminum is a good example of the changing times. Forty years ago, it took about 22 empty aluminum cans to equal one pound. Today, technology has allowed less material to be used in the making of each can, and one pound of aluminum cans now equals about 34 empty cans.
The substantial amount of energy saved by making cans from recycled aluminum illustrates how wasteful it is to throw them in the garbage. Earth911.com states that for each aluminum can thrown away, about half of that can’s volume of gasoline is wasted. That amounts to more than 3 gallons of gasoline wasted for every pound of cans in a landfill.
So, instead of throwing away your cans, why not recycle them instead? It takes surprisingly little effort to make a big impact.
Meridith Byrd is a marine biologist and invites readers to contact her at meridith.byrd@gmail.com.