- [Justine] Recycled aluminum
is coming for your water,
and your iPad.
- 100% recyled aluminum.
(audience applauds)
- It's just water but
I feel good about it.
- More and more companies
are making products
out of recyled aluminum
as a way to go green,
and to help solve a big problem,
plastic pollution.
Unlike plastic, aluminum can
be recyled almost indefinitely,
so it has the potential to put a huge dent
in the mountains of
plastic waste we produce.
But is aluminum's future really as bright
as all the hype suggests?
(light music)
You probably know that
plastic is a real problem.
It's made using fossil
fuels and lots of them.
Globally we produce 400 million
tons of plastic every year.
And when we're done with it,
most ends up in landfills or the ocean.
What's worse, less than 10%
of all plastics ever made
have been recyled.
But there's a broader problem
with plastic recycling,
even when a plastic bottle
actually gets recycled,
it usually doesn't become
another plastic bottle.
- The issue is a little bit more complex
than the general media
would have you believe.
- That's Uday Patel,
he's a senior researcher with
the energy consulting firm,
Wood Mackenzie.
And he says that bottle
containing, say, fizzy drinks,
are actually made from
layers of different polymers.
- When you try and then recycle them,
it's far more difficult to separate
all the constituent polymers out
then convert that back into
another bottle ready for use.
- Instead of being perfectly recycled,
plastics like these
usually get down-cycled.
Those bottles might end
up as fibers in a pillow,
or maybe a garbage bin.
So most of that stuff can't be recycled,
the plastic ends up in
the trash eventually.
Down-cycling just delays the inevitable.
Finding alternatives to plastic
is where aluminum comes in.
Unlike plastics, aluminum isn't considered
a dead end waste stream.
An aluminum can become
yet another aluminum can
pretty much without losing
anything in the process.
The average aluminum can contains
almost 70% recycled content.
That's more than three
times the recycled content
the EPA estimates for glass or plastic,
and almost 70% of all the
aluminum produced to date
is still in use today.
Though some environmental advocates
think that number is lower.
Aluminum hasn't always
been a popular choice
for beverage containers
because it's more expensive than plastic,
but as plastic gets a bad rap,
more and more people are becoming
fans of the aluminum can.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi announced this year
that they're working to roll out
water packaged in aluminum
as part of their efforts to
cut down on plastic waste.
And then there's Jason Momoa,
who announced a new line
of canned water in April,
and made some big claims along the way.
- Only one thing
can really help our
planet and save our planet
as long as we recycle,
and that's aluminum.
- But whether we take a
sip from a can or a bottle,
that containers comes with
an environmental cost.
As consumers,
it's easier to see the
pollution from our trash
than the destruction from manufacturing.
But the manufacturing is often much worse.
Even though aluminum is one
of the most abundant metals
on Earth's crust,
it's not so easy to extract.
It's hidden away in this, bauxite ore.
Up to five tons of bauxite
might need to be mined
in order to get one ton of aluminum.
And to separate the
aluminum from the bauxite,
it goes through a chemical process
that leaves behind a toxic, red sludge.
Making aluminum also releases
super potent greenhouse gases,
called perfluorocarbons.
It actually takes about
twice as much energy
to produce new aluminum as it
does to produce new plastic.
But recycling aluminum saves
about 90% of the energy
that it took to make it.
So to reap the most environmental rewards
of using aluminum,
we ought to make sure
we're sinking our money
into recycled and not virgin aluminum.
Some companies are getting that memo.
Over the past couple of years,
Apple started making
cases for its laptops,
iPads, and watches with
100% recycled aluminum.
But the net environmental
benefits aren't totally clear yet.
- This is one of those instances where
disentangling the marketing
from the actual manufacturing practice
is hard to do without fuller disclosure
from the company in question.
- That's Josh Lepawsky,
a professor at Memorial
University of Newfoundland
who maps the international
movement of electronic waste.
- Using recycled metals,
especially recycled aluminum,
by manufacturers, that
in itself is not new.
Apple may be presenting it as
a new development for them.
- He points out that recycling
isn't a perfect process either,
especially when it comes to electronics,
which can be loaded with toxic stuff
that can harm the environment
and people after being thrown away.
- Getting recycled materials
is an industrial process.
And, as an industrial
process it can be very ugly,
and have real harm.
Workers in recycling
plants can experience harm,
there's no question.
- Cans and iPads are just
pieces of the global demand
for aluminum.
Aluminum production
boomed from 2010 to 2018,
thanks in part to China's
industrialization,
but since 2018, trade wars,
and slowing growth in China,
curbed demand.
Some experts do see signs of a rebound,
and it might be thanks,
in part, to aluminum cans.
- Change in consumer
tastes and preferences
that will dictate what happens there.
But certainly with some of our contacts
within the industry,
we're hearing of increasing
interest in the use of
aluminum can stock.
All of a sudden it's
gotten a little bit more,
what's the word?
Sexy.
It's become a little bit more buzzworthy.
- More aluminum demand
might be good for business,
but you can probably
see where this is going.
Eco-friendly consumption
is still consumption.
And it can even be self defeating.
It's a problem called Jevons Paradox.
In the 19th century,
William Jevons argued that
making coal use more efficient
actually led to people using more coal
instead of less of it.
The same could happen for aluminum.
The takeaway is that aluminum
isn't gonna save the world.
We don't wanna solve one
problem, too much plastic,
by creating a new one, too much aluminum.
Hey, everyone, if you wanna
learn about the dark side
of e-waste recycling,
check out the video below.
And don't forget to like and subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
