2006 Municipal Recycling Supplement: Aluminum Engine

We’ve all heard that every cloud has a silver lining, but could it be true even when the problem comes in the form of a $725.8 billion national trade deficit for 2005, thousands of lost manufacturing jobs or the need for quality low-income housing? If you spend any time talking to Dr. Subodh Das at Secat Inc., then you’ll discover the answer might literally be, "Yes."

Das is the CEO and president of Secat, an aluminum research institute in Lexington, Ky., that has undertaken projects for aluminum manufacturers around the world. Based on work for one of his latest projects, Das has found that for each 1 percent increase in the quantity of aluminum cans recycled, up to $16 million annually could be shaved off the national debt.

If $16 million hardly seems like a dent in a $725.8 billion debt, consider this: According to the 2005 Can Manufacturers Institute’s Can Shipment Report, the United States produced roughly 99.2 billion aluminum cans. Based on 2005 finding by The Aluminum Association, 52 percent of those cans were recycled. While that was up from an historic low of 50 percent in 2003, it’s down 15.9 percent points from our nation’s 1992 peak recycling rate of 67.9 percent.

Das says, "When you look outside the United States, you get a more enticing challenge in terms of what it is possible to achieve in terms of recycling. If we summon ourselves to think big and be as great as other nations in recycling, $16 million could easily multiply into hundreds of millions (of dollars)."

In 2005 the world’s leading aluminum beverage can recycler, Brazil, re-processed 96.2 percent of the aluminum cans sold in its country. Japan had an 82 percent recycling rate, while Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway had recycling rates that ranged from 75 percent to 95 percent.

If the national debt isn’t enough to motivate consumers to see these beverage containers as something other than garbage, Das says there are numerous other potential economic advantages.

"Just a 1 percent change in the national recycling rate would not only reduce the national trade deficit, it would provide a source of 40 million pounds of aluminum per year," he says.

That could be a vital supply source if aluminum industry consumption predictions are correct. BHP, a primary aluminum smelter based in South Africa, foresees the probability of aluminum demand increasing 59 percent by 2015. This growth will be fuled largely by China’s demand for beverage cans and car bodies.

Das says, "Primary smelters manufacture aluminum from raw materials. In the U.S. since 2001, we’ve seen over a half dozen smelters close, and our national primary aluminum production is down over 1.2 million tons per year. With primary plant closures and curtailed production, we are loosing the manufacturing jobs that contribute to a healthy economy and we are now importing the primary materials because it’s more affordable."

He continues, "Making matters worse is that one of today’s leading exports to China is scrap metal, including aluminum.

"It takes only 5 percent of the energy to make aluminum from scrap material, like used beverage containers, versus making aluminum from raw materials. So not only have we forfeited well-paying manufacturing jobs, we are now exporting the cheapest aluminum source to counties that already compete with us with labor cost advantages," he says. "We are exporting scrap at 80 cents a pound and importing primary aluminum at about $1.20 per pound."

That primary metal isn’t just being used for aluminum cans. According to information released in March of 2006 by The Aluminum Association, as a runner up to steel, aluminum has dethroned iron to become the second most used automotive material worldwide. The average aluminum content of today’s passenger cars and trucks is 319 pounds. That 1 percent recycling rate that equals 40 million pounds of aluminum is enough metal for more than 125,000 cars and trucks.

According to Das, boosting aluminum recycling and keeping the scrap material in the United States could create new manufacturing jobs, too. His studies show recycling plant activities could employ 80 to 120 people at an average salary of about $50,000 per year.

Additionally, compared to primary aluminum plants, recycling 40 million pounds of scrap versus U.S. primaries creating aluminum from raw materials would save 1 trillion British thermal units of energy per year.

Looking at it from another perspective, the Container Recycling Institute reports that recycling one aluminum can saves enough electricity to run a laptop computer for more than 10 hours.

Recycling cans puts money into nonprofit organizations’ pockets, too. The Aluminum Association states that each year in the United States, the industry pays out more than $800 million dollars for empty aluminum cans. A portion of this money goes to private individuals and organizations like local schools, Boy and Girl Scouts of America and Habitat for Humanity.

One unique recycling partnership is Cans for Habitat, an alliance between The Aluminum Association and Habitat for Humanity. Since the program began in 1997, more than 600 Habitat affiliates across the country have recycled 12 million pounds of aluminum cans, earning approximately $4.4 million, which equates to 95 Habitat homes. In 2005 alone, Habitat affiliates recycled nearly 432,000 pounds of aluminum cans, generating almost $197,500 in revenue for the construction of Habitat homes.

During 2005, the Boy Scouts of America, W.D. Boyce Council, collected more than 3.5 million cans as part of its Scouts CAN program. The effort raised more than $50,000, helping the Scouts fund the construction of one complete Habitat for Humanity Home in Peoria, Ill., and six other Habitat for Humanity homes throughout central Illinois. Scouts CAN is part of a national Good Turn for America program, which is a national call to service to address the issues of hunger, homelessness and poor health.

According to Das, if every American recycled one can today, Habitat could build 56 homes tomorrow.

So, if the silver lining surrounding the national deficit and other economic woes such as dwindling manufacturing jobs, the energy crisis and homelessness is more aluminum recycling, how does it go from being a pie-in-the-sky concept to becoming a reality?

This year, Secat and the University of Kentucky began a three-year, $800,000 study to analyze the existing dynamics surrounding aluminum can recycling. The Sloan Foundation Industry Centers program, which is a division of the philanthropic nonprofit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation started by the former president and CEO of General Motors Corp., is funding the study. Additional funding comes from a consortium of aluminum producers, the commonwealth of Kentucky and the University of Kentucky. The goals of the study are to develop a consumer behavior model that illustrates how to enhance recycling rates and to identify how industry can enhance the efficiency of the recycling process.

"Effective recycling programs require people to begin to participate and remain a participant for the long term," Das explains. "We believe it’s important to understand the recycling studies that have been done previously, so that we can focus our efforts on areas that may not have been investigated at all yet or that need further investigation to become more accurate, informative tools."

For example, some research has shown that the habitual recycler is a person who is older, wealthier, lives in a household with fewer members and tends to be more liberal in his/her political orientation. What the research didn’t find, however, was any information examining the interaction of demographic variables that may facilitate turning intent into action, and researchers at Secat believe studies in this area could be beneficial to determining the target audience that will have the most impact.

For example, recyclers are generally older with more income. Which variable, age or income, has the most impact on recycling behavior? Is it more beneficial to target recycling campaigns to affluent neighborhoods comprised of younger individuals or to those neighborhoods where the average age is higher?

To study population behavior, Secat researchers will use Fayette County, Kentucky, as a microenvironment. Relative to the national profile for recyclers, Kentuckians are younger, less wealthy, have larger households and are more conservative politically. Consequently, programs to motivate Kentuckians to recycle will have to overcome their tendencies not to recycle, as compared to national norms.

In Fayette County, researchers are exploring a two-pronged approach to increasing aluminum can recycling. The first prompts those already recycling to recycle more. The second is to get those who are environmentally aware, but do not currently engage in recycling, to recycle.

Unlike prior studies, Das believes Secat’s efforts will be the first methodological attempt to improve consumer recycling. Using a data and statistical analysis processes called Six Sigma, which was developed by Bill Smith at Motorola Corp. in 1986, the project treats each aluminum can that is not recycled as a defect. The goal is to reduce the defect level by first determining the sources of variability in the recycling process and then by decreasing that variability to increase customer satisfaction (i.e., ease of getting the cans to the recycling facility), thereby increasing the recycling rate.

From an industrial standpoint, Secat’s research mission is to investigate methods for lowering the cost of melting aluminum and for developing and implementing more recycling-friendly alloys. While consumers tend to think of an aluminum can as a single item, to a metallurgist like Das, it’s actually a multi-part item consisting of body, or can, stock, and lid stock. Each component has its own recipe that includes aluminum along with other metals and ingredients. Combined, they create specific attributes during manufacturing, consumer use and recycling.

What Secat hopes to find is a new blend of ingredients that fulfills the application requirements and offers economic benefits, such as requiring less energy to recycle or create, using lower cost ingredients or negating the need for specialized body and lid stock.

"Twenty years ago, we were the world’s primary aluminum manufacturer," Das says. "Today, we are not. Those days are not coming back. As a nation we must look at what we have at our disposal and leverage it to our best advantage. We are a nation of consumers and we have scrap. If we can embrace that times have changed and be willing to adapt our products without compromising quality, there is much to be gained."

In his opinion, our best option for preserving our economy is to protect and improve our abilities to recycle aluminum.

"Putting aluminum cans in the curbside bin isn’t just an environmentally friendly thing to do," he says. "At Secat, we want people to look at an empty aluminum can and know recycling it is vital to an American job or a home for a low-income family—because it is."