It's cheap! It's easy! It's... aluminum!

ok, so everybody knows that recycling is a good thing and that throwing stuff away that you should recycle is bad, right? why? now there's a thinker. why? why is recycling so good and throwing stuff away bad? (and no sunday school answers, either.) the thing is, there is no solid answer without context. for the sake of this post, my context is a coke can.

aluminum is one of the most useful metals available to consumers today. it's heat resistant, holds up to freezing temperatures, is quite malleable, and costs very little. it also does not break down easily. aluminum in any form can last for over 400 years before it even starts to biodegrade.

but it's so small that it doesn't take up much space in a landfill, right? nope. 68,000,000,000 lbs. of aluminum are produced every year. the average american throws away 14 lbs of aluminum per year from packaging (coke cans) and 3 lbs. of aluminum foil. now multiply that by everyone living in the continental u.s. and you've got... well... alot! each year tens of millions of tons of aluminum in any form end up in landfills. that's TONS, not pounds.

the good news is that aluminum is one of the easiest and most frequently recycled products in america. why is that? well for one, it's so frequently used and easy to sell. the second reason is that it is 100% recyclable. that means there is no waste. none. this is the only recyclable material that does not break down and create some sort of waste in the recycling process. 1 recycled can = 1 new can.

so, we know that it's easy to recycle. that still does not tell us why we should bother. well here's the dirt. aluminum is made from bauxite. bauxite is a mineral that has to be mined and formed into metal. mining and smelting (turning it to aluminum) takes lots of energy. most of that energy is created from burning fuels like gas and coal. it also creates a great deal of heat and emits toxins into the air during the smelting process. those toxins include hydrogen flouride, sulfur dioxide, and nitric oxide. these toxins rise into the air and settle on the plants and soil around the smelting facility and in the surrounding towns. this hurts humans and... wait for it... cows!

cows, you say? yes, cows. cows eat grass that has absorbed the toxins from the smelting process. over time, this causes the cows to lose their teeth. now, i know this sounds ridiculous, but it is true. if a cow has no teeth, it cant eat. if it can't eat, it can't produce milk and gets skinny. that means we all end up drinking soy milk and eating veggie burgers... well, maybe not that drastic, but you get my point.

now, the toxins don't just attach to the grass cows eat. it also lands on crops and vegetables we eat. since we don't necessarily eat from the same crops every day like cows eat from the same grass, we aren't likely to lose our teeth over this. but we could lose something more valuable. over time these toxins can build up in our bodies. in significant quantities they can lead to parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, and lou gehrig's disease.

recycling aluminum creates none of these toxins.

also, it takes less energy. 5% of the energy it takes to mine bauxite, in fact. that equals 20,000,000 barrels of oil per year that would be saved. and that means we pay less at the pump.

...and the cows get to keep their teeth.