Why is recycling metal a good idea? It reduces pollution, saves resources, reduces waste going into landfills, and prevents the destruction of habitats from mining new ore. Producing recycled aluminum uses 95% less energy and emits 95% less carbon dioxide than when making aluminum from bauxite ore.
Americans use over 100 million cans per day. The cans that were not recycled last year had a scrap value of over 600 million dollars. We were literally throwing away a fortune - let’s get on it folks.
Junk vehicles that have been rusting out can usually be towed for free as long as you have the title. The metal is usually paid for as well since automobile metal is easily recycled.
Did you know that old car hubcaps can be recycled? Hubcaps are often made from aluminum and sometimes even steel, and both of these metals can be completely recycled and reused again saving energy and landfill waste.
Would you use more recycled materials if you were thinking of the benefits of recycling while shopping? For example, the average yearly paper usage for every American is the equivalent of 5.5 trees that are each 40 feet tall.
While metals can be highly valuable, they certainly aren't the only candidates for recycling. Paper in particular, is well suited for recycling so it would be a good idea to include any old newspapers and magazines you have lying around along with the metal scraps.
The principal use for lead is in batteries for energy storage. Scrapped batteries are the main source for lead recovery, and lead is the most recycled material based on percent of output.
Thanks to increases in technology, the metal recycling industry is growing in the U.S. Care to guess the estimated value of the ferrous (steel, iron) portion of the industry in 2012? That would be more than $30 billion.
Did you know that the United States recycles more than 150 million tons of scrap metal materials annually? This includes such metals as iron, steel lead, copper, aluminum, brass, bronze, magnesium, and tin.
Salvage is another form of recycling. Valuable substances or components of a used product are reclaimed without actually reusing the rest of the product. This is often the case with very toxic substances, like the lead found in batteries and the gold in computer chips. These are materials that need to be kept from landfills.
To provide an idea of how much aluminum is recycled annually in the US, imagine this: if all aluminum scrap were used solely to produce standard soda cans, the line of cans would stretch more than 25 million miles — the distance from Earth to Venus.
Manufacturing products using recycled metals results in significant energy savings. For aluminum, energy savings can be as high as 95 percent; for copper, 85 percent; for lead, 65 percent; and for zinc, 60 percent.
Did you know that miners put themselves at considerable risk just to bring up the ore that we need to make new metal? Take, for instance, the case of the 33 miners that were trapped underground in a copper-gold mine for 69 days in Chile. Thankfully, everyone made it out.
According to the EPA, the annual recycling rate of scrap metal in the United States is equal to removing more than 4.5 million cars from the road for an entire year.
Do you know that recycled aluminum can save enough energy to run a television for three hours? Make sure you properly recycle your metal to get the most out of it.
Did you know that Americans use enough steel every day to run a steel pipeline from New York City to Los Angeles and back?
Metal recycling is able to meet a good percentage of U.S. raw material needs (depending on the specific type of metal). In terms of nonferrous metals, recycling provides 43 percent of copper, 32 percent of aluminum, 55 percent of lead, and 19 percent of zinc.
Mining, though crucial, also happens to be one of the most environmentally destructive human activities. As such, it might be wise to limit demand for virgin metals by increasing the rates of metal recycling and choosing to use recycled products.
So what happens to scrap metal once it’s been recycled? Recycled metals are used in a wide range of industries, including the production of automobiles, structural steel, aluminum siding, and toys.
How can recycling metals have an impact on the greenhouse effect? Recycling reduces the use of energy in the manufacturing process of various metals. This allows carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases to get trapped in the atmosphere. When more metals are recycled, that reduces the release of greenhouse gases.
Zinc is a vital metal in protective coatings for steel (galvanized), and is an alloy element with tin to make brass. It is also a chemical compound found in paint and rubber.
The metal recycling industry is a very positive resource on an environmental level, but did you know that it is also a major source of employment? In 2007, there were 50,000 people who helped to run this industry and 137,000 people in the recycling business as a whole.
Consumers use and recycle more aluminum than any other metal- up to 120,000 units every minute! The bulk of curbside metal pickup consists of soda, soup, and pet food cans. It’s important to remember that these items are recyclable!
