Aluminum Recycling Benefits Everyone!!

  • Recycling improves the appearance of the community with no unsightly crushed cans laying around.
  • It helps our economy by saving cost of producing more aluminum cans.
  • Helps community groups, such as the Brown County Humane Society, raise funds to assist animals.

So why recycle aluminum? Aluminum recycling provides many environmental, economic and community benefits; it saves energy, time money and precious natural resources; and it generates jobs and helps to pay for community services that makes better for millions of people and animals.

More than 100 billion aluminum cans are sold in the United States each year, but less than half are recycled.

There is no limit to how many times aluminum can be recycled. It is considered a sustainable metal, which means it can be recycled again and again with no loss of material. The aluminum can you toss into your recycling bin today will be completely recycled and back on the store shelf in just 60 days.

Recycling aluminum saves 90-95 percent of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore. Recycling one pound of aluminum (33 cans) saves about 7 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Toss an aluminum can into the trash instead of recycling it, and the energy required to replace that discarded resource with new aluminum from bauxite ore is enough to keep a 100-watt incandescent light bulb burning for five hours or to power the average laptop computer for 11 hours, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

The energy it takes to replace all of the aluminum cans wasted every year in the United States alone is equivalent to 16 million barrels of oil, enough to keep a million cars on the road for a year. If all those discarded cans were recycled every year, the electricity saved could power 1.3 million American Homes.

Every year, the aluminum industry pays out close to a billion dollars for recycling aluminum cans – money that can go to support organizations, such as Brown County Humane Society, that sponsors ongoing aluminum recycling programs.

Aluminum cans are easy to collect and recycle, but many people throw them out anyway. Recycling aluminum cans saves a considerable amount of energy; it also reduces carbon dioxide emissions and the amount of waste headed into landfills. Because millions of tons of aluminum are recycled each year, that means millions of tons of space in landfills is saved. Collecting your cans for recycling is an important step you can take to help the environment.

Brown County Humane Society asks the New Ulm community to help in recycling aluminum cans. There is a recycle bin at the BCHS Shelter at 1301 South Valley Street in New Ulm as well as a bin on the east side of Pizza Ranch. Royal Tire maintains the recycle bin at the Humane Society, transports and sells the aluminum cans for the shelter. The money raised goes into the shelter’s general fund to help care for the dogs and cats.

Please help by recycling your aluminum cans!