Used aluminum cans are piling up in scrap yards – IOTW Report

Used aluminum cans are piling up in scrap yards

Tuesday, 19 March 2019, 12:30 MJA Uncategorized 24

DC: Used aluminum cans are piling up in scrap yards as the market for aluminum recyclables shrinks in size and profitability, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The price for used aluminum cans tanked 30 percent since the summer of 2018. Aluminum rollers are cutting recycled aluminum from cans out of their business models to prioritize more profitable areas of business.

Old aluminum cans are limited in what aluminum products they can be used in. Car and airplane manufacturers tend to stay away from using aluminum made from recycled cans. Aluminum producers are turning away from the used can market despite facing social pressure to embrace recycling, WSJ reports.

The slowdown in recycling aluminum cans comes amid a downturn the recycling market more broadly. Chinese tariffs and increased standards in recyclables’ purity have tanked the price of scrap paper and used plastic in the U.S.

“Recycling as we know it isn’t working,” Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Solid Waste Management Authority chief James Warner told WSJ in March 2018. “There’s always been ups and downs in the market, but this is the biggest disruption that I can recall.”

China served as the hub of the recycling market for years, taking up to 70 percent of the world’s plastic waste before throttling down on plastic imports in 2018, according to NPR. No other country has the infrastructure and capacity to process recycled goods like China, and now trash is piling up in developed countries as they look for new buyers of used plastic, paper and aluminum.  read more

24 Comments on Used aluminum cans are piling up in scrap yards

  2. Mostly because the Chinese have glutted the market with their aluminum. I recall a story a couple years back where they have huge stockyards in Mexico crammed with aluminum ingot’s to bypass customs using NAFTA. Hopefully that will change.

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  3. “Car and airplane manufacturers tend to stay away from using aluminum made from recycled cans. ”

    Wonder why?

    Who would object to flying in an airplane made out of used beer cans?

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  4. You mean trucking our trash to a train. And training our trash to a ship. And shipping our trash to Asia.

    To be shredded, dipped in acid, and burnt. With the left-overs dumped on the ground and in the sea.

    Then shipping the new, not “trash” from Asia. And training the new, not “trash” from a ship. And trucking the new, not “trash” from a train.

    So we can buy it again. And throw it in the trash.

    Isn’t a viable “business” model? Unless the aristocracy is paying itself to play along? Isn’t worth paying for to save the herd of meat machines? Unless the aristocracy is paying itself to play along?

    That… that can’t be! Somebody pay Al Gore to fly in and speechify! The world might end! Twelve years from 1970!

    Hurry! THIS WEB SUCKS

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  8. @anon – There is something drastically wrong with having to send recycle materials halfway around the world and back. Probably some stupid tree hugger regulations making it near impossible to recycle locally

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  10. Recycling makes me laugh. “Do Your Part!” LOL

    Those scrap metal and rubber tire drives during World War Two were simply ‘hearts & minds civilian war involvement’ schemes. Seventy-percent of that junk was dumped in landfills and ocean basins.

    “Mommy, will our old toaster kill a Jap?”
    “Yes dear, if he plugs it in.”

    🙂

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  11. Then why is the price of aluminum foil going up and up and up ?
    I am re-using AL foil over and over again (re-washing and re-washing), until it is useless.

    Why don’t they remake the recycled AL beer cans into the foil product? Something doesn’t add up.

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  12. …if the Govenment tells you to do something, it’s usually something stupid.

    If it wasn’t stupid, you would ALREADY be doing it YOURSELF.

    …that goes for recycling, and pretty much everything ELSE they bribe, cajole, command, and threaten to shoot you over unless you do it, and therein lay the core of Socialism…

    …oh, speaking of recycling…THIS WEB SUCK!

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  16. I was crushing them and bringing them to the scrap yard up until about a year and a half ago.

    Used to be I could buy a few cases of beer with the proceeds. Now I don’t even bother.

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  22. The plastics that are separated and compacted in Oregon are then taken to eastern Oregon and buried.
    These plastics could be made into high grade fuel with very little byproduct. But the states have been burned so many times by green companies that they don’t want to take the chance of letting/helping it happen..
    So be sure to separate your garbage very carefully because it’s all going in the same hole.
    And not much happens in Oregon without pay to play.
    The left is nuts.

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  23. Aluminum heat sinks used in electronics
    are “extruded” aluminum and are called
    #1 aluminum.The scrappers down here on the coast
    look for “the mother of all metals” monel & incanel.
    Used in old shrimp boat gas tanks.About $5 per#
    non ferrous & high nickel/chrome content.

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