How Is Aluminum Recycled?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Lynn Bestul, I'm the solid wast planner for New Hanover county in North Carolina. I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about aluminum can recycling. And what I'm going to do is tell you that can that you have at your house when you finished that soda where it goes from there. Because some of you have containers at your house that you can put all your recyclables to there you can set it right there. Some counties have drop off sites where you have to drive those recyclables to a drop off site, that aluminum can would go to that site. In fact some of you just have different colored bags, and that bag goes through the garbage truck, and it's pulled out at recycling facility. But once those aluminum cans get to a processing facility if it is mixed in with other materials it goes through a conveyor system, and there is a system it's called edicurrent. It's like static electricity that shoots across the conveyor belt, and it bounces those aluminum cans off the conveyor. That's how they start with the aluminum, they take that aluminum to a truck. Some places will bale the aluminum cans up, some places loaded it into a truck loose. And it's hauled off to a facility that does the actual recycling of the aluminum cans. Aluminum is one of those materials it can continuously be recycled. So therefore, it's a never ending cycle with it. The best thing to do with aluminum is to recycle it. More than fifty percent of the cans that you send out there are recycled. And that is how aluminum is recycled."