Union Worker are Sanitation Workers Too and Recycling Pros
Have you ever looked on the can of your favorite beverage and seen the recycle symbol? You may also have noticed printed on the can is something like “HI ME 5 cents “ but do you know what that means? Did you know that once you are through with that beverage can its reused and you may not believe where you would find it next. Aluminum is an infinitely recyclable metal and is the poster child for shifting from a linear take-make-waste mentality of industrial production to a more circular model in which everything, at the end of its useful life, is made into something else. Recycling aluminum is a trend that is constantly growing and major manufactures are doing their parts to ensure that what can be reused is. The production lines of automotive facilities are a prime example of an industry that reuses metals such as aluminum.
Currently when aluminum cans or products come into recycling facilities they are crushed and trucked from all over the country to facilities that sort them where dirtied with paints and coating go to one end and begin the journey to their renewed life. The aluminum scraps are shredded into little pieces, purified, melted down and cast into large blocks. Those blocks are then shipped to their next destination where they are rolled into sheets where they are then sent out to be molded into nearly anything. This reused aluminum could become another container of your favorite beverage or even go to the auto and electronics industries and turned into the parts of the very vehicle you drive every day. Aluminum has been used to manufacture automobiles for well over a hundred years, and 90 percent of automobile aluminum scrap is recovered and recycled into the main component for the electrical wiring, wheels, lamps, transmission and a variety of other engine parts within cars today.
The automotive industry continues to use recycled aluminum and other metals in their manufacturing industries. Who would have thought that the soda can that you threw out would later potentially become the piston that drives your vehicle? That “HI ME 5 cents” imprinted on the side of your favorite carbonated beverage is an incentive to recycle that can for later use. Those beverage containers are a mini gold mine for recyclers; if you collect enough of them and take them to your local scrap yard you could walk away with a little cash in your pocket as well as the pride in knowing that they will be reprocessed and put to good use. Next time you leave the house to go to the store, stop and take a good look at your vehicle and take a moment to smile and know that the automotive industry reuses metals like aluminum to develop a safer and greener car just for you through recycling.
https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/aluminum-and-the-auto-industry/