Metal Recycling Information
Metal recycling is the process of reusing waste metals to produce new metal items. Aluminum and steel are the most recycled metals in the world and recycling them is easy. Therefore, metal recycling is one of the easiest ways for you to be environmentally friendly. In addition, steel and aluminum do not lose any of their properties when recycled, so they can be used over and over again, possibly making mining of aluminum and steel less necessary in the future.
Other People Are Reading
-
Aluminum and Steel Usage
-
The familiar aluminum household items we use in our homes include aluminum beverage cans, aluminum cooking pans, other aluminum food containers and aluminum foil. Different industries use aluminum in buildings, airplanes, trains, cars, green houses, window frames and road signs. You can find steel items in your home, if you have any canned foods. Steel is also used in many transportation items, such as bicycle frames, pipes, train tracks, ship hulls and cars.
Recycling Metals
-
All metals are relatively easy to recycle. With aluminum, you need to separate aluminum beverage cans from the other aluminum products. Many recycling facilities also accept aluminum foil and aluminum cooking pans and other containers to be recycled, so ask if the facility in your community accepts other than beverage cans. In addition, aluminum beverage cans are redeemable for cash in some recycling facilities. Steel cans require little bit more effort because you have to wash them before they can be recycled.
-
Advantages
-
Using recycled metals produces significant savings when compared to producing metals from virgin materials. Recycling metals conserves non-renewable fossil fuels and reduce energy consumption, use of raw materials and carbon dioxide emissions. Recycling aluminum cans uses only 5 percent of the carbon dioxide compared to carbon dioxide emissions of raw aluminum production. Recycling steel saves 74 percent of energy when recycling aluminum saves almost 95 percent of energy compared to using raw materials to produce either metal. In addition, both steel and aluminum ore are mined using open-cut mining which destroys large sections of landscape with only few options for mitigation later.
Challenges
-
The challenge with metal recycling is our own willingness to recycle our metal waste. All you need to do is wash and separate the metal waste from other household waste and make it available for the recycling program in your neighborhood. Without convenient curbside recycling program in your community, you, however, need to make an extra effort to get to the recycling facility closest to your home. This can make recycling a time consuming and inconvenient task. In addition, not all recycling facilities accept all metal recyclables.
Recycling Process
-
The recycling processes for steel and aluminum are very similar. The recycling process for aluminum starts with shredding the whole cans into little pieces and removing any colored coating and moisture. Then the pieces are loaded into a hot furnace, heated up to at least 660 degrees C to produce molten aluminum. After this the molten aluminum is cast into either ingots or bars or formed into large sheets. Then the aluminum sheets are transported to be cut into cans when ingots and bars are transported for further processing.
The recycling process for steel starts with sorting the steel waste from other domestic waste, unless it is already done by bringing the steel waste to the recycling facility separate from other waste. After this the steel waste is put into a furnace and molten iron and oxygen are added before the furnace is heated to 1,700 degrees C. Then the liquid metal is poured into a mold to make big slabs and these slabs are rolled into coils which are used to make new steel products.
-
