Less than one half of the 100 billion aluminum beverage cans sold in the U.S. last year were recycled, according to a July report released by the Container Recycling Institute. CRI, a non-profit research group that promotes recycling policies and practices, reported there are serious environmental impacts associated with the decline of can recycling.

The report, “Trashed Cans: The Global Environmental Impacts of Aluminum Can Wasting in America,” found that the 50.7 billion cans thrown away by Americans last year amounted to 1.5 billion pounds of aluminum that ended up in landfills, incinerators or littered on the nations streets and highways. CRI researchers said Americans wasted seven million tons of aluminum cans between 1990 and 2000, enough to make 316,000 Boeing 737 airplanes. Within two years, Americans will have wasted one trillion cans since the aluminum beverage can was introduced in the 1960s.

Each wasted can is replaced with one made from raw materials which requires nearly three times the energy and generates significantly more pollution than a can made from aluminum scrap. More than three million tons of greenhouse gases and 75,000 tons of sulfur and nitrogen oxides were emitted in the mining, refining, processing and smelting of virgin raw materials to replace the cans Americans wasted in 2001, according to the report. “Had the 50.7 billion cans wasted last year been recycled, they would have saved the energy equivalent of 16 million barrels of crude oil: enough energy to generate electricity for 2.7 million U.S. homes for a year,” researchers wrote.

The report also attributes soil erosion, contamination of water supplies and habitat destruction from strip mining and flooding of forests beneath hydroelectric reservoirs (built to generate electricity for aluminum smelters) to primary aluminum production.

One cause of increased can wasting identified in the report is the rising trend in immediate consumption. Americans consume more beverages outside the home, away from the convenience of their residential curbside recycling bins.

The decline of the national recycling rate for aluminum beverage cans, which peaked at 65%, is due to declining financial incentives to recycle, according to the report. Aluminum scrap prices have risen relatively little in twenty years and, over time, manufacturers have made cans with less aluminum so it now takes 33 cans to make a pound versus 25 in 1980. These factors, along with the closing of many redemption centers in recent years, make collecting and redeeming cans less profitable than in the past.

To stem the tide of can wasting, the report calls for deposits on beverage containers, voluntarily imposed by the beverage industry or mandated by deposit laws. “The refundable deposit system is the only mechanism proven to recover beverage containers at rates that exceed 70%, and deposits of 10 cents result in recovery rates that exceed 90%,” researchers wrote.

The report noted that the average redemption rate in deposit states is 78% versus 28% in non-deposit states. A report by Businesses and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling, cited by CRI, found that in 1999 the nine deposit states with 29% of the population accounted for half of all beverage containers recycled in the U.S. The CRI report also urged maintaining existing neighborhood recycling programs and increasing recycling opportunities in multifamily apartments, commercial buildings and public places.

In Texas, container deposit legislation was introduced in previous legislatures, but died in the face of well-financed opposition from the beverage industry that favors voluntary recycling. On the national front, Senator Jim Jeffords recently introduced legislation requiring a ten-cent deposit on all recyclable beverage containers. A similar bill has been proposed in the House.

The report, written by CRI researcher Jennifer Gitlitz, is available through the CRI web site at www.container-recycling.org.

Graph courtesy Container Recycling Institute.