Aluminum is everywhere. As a lightweight, durable, and incredibly abundant metal, it has found its way into thousands of finished products, both domestically and around the world.
Modern industrial superpowers — particularly India and China — hold some of the largest reserves of aluminum and aluminum ore, further adding to its global market necessity. However, as probably expected, there are some serious environmental drawbacks to the prominence of this metal.
The High Energy Demands of Ripping Away Plant Life
Aluminum ore requires significant energy to be formed into finished aluminum. The process begins with the strip-mining of bauxite — aluminum ore — which is subsequently broken into smaller pieces and treated with a chemical solution, removing all the impurities and non-bauxite material. Workers then blast the remaining bauxite with intense heat, baking the bauxite into a powder, which is eventually smelted into finished aluminum.
This whole process has both direct and indirect effects on the environment. Strip mining, for instance, destroys vast tracts of land, tearing away natural vegetation and soil, often rendering the land entirely unusable for decades after. Indirectly, ripping away natural layers of soil and plant can also exacerbate natural hazards. Harmful runoff from nearby farms or the mining process — ordinarily filtered by vegetation and soil — can reach bodies of water and spread pollution to the entire area.
The Aluminum Production Process
After the baked aluminum extract arrives at a smelting facility, it is turned to molten metal within a giant crucible, then energized with a supercharged electrical current. The molten metal is then stored, cooled, formed into usable units, depending on where it is being used, and shipped to a factory location. At the factory, workers and machines shape the aluminum into its finished product, an extensive process in its right.
Every step in this process requires significant energy and causes polluting by-products. Melting the aluminum takes a tremendous amount of heat; typically fueled by coal, natural gas, or oil. The electrical current used during this process — a necessary step in production and refinement — requires a huge charge for a comparatively little-finished product, and is completed with electricity produced at power plants with the use of natural gases.
Finally, the process itself emits carbon dioxide and other common greenhouse gasses. As there are no truly effective means for quarantining these gases, they are often released directly into the atmosphere. This is troubling, particularly given that factory production and power plant energy production account for a significant percentage of man-made greenhouse emissions. While US facilities have some controls on emissions, this is not necessarily true overseas, where the majority of aluminum production takes place.
Consumption
The production of aluminum occurs in direct correlation with the demand for finished aluminum products. While the steps above often occur overseas, America remains the consumption capital of the world. Last year, for instance, the US recycled over 50 billion soda cans, a number that only accounts for 1 in 5 of the total bottles consumed nationally. These stats come after the lowest soda consumption in thirty years.
Even with potential improvements in the number of aluminum cans used and thrown away each year, the statistics are staggering. Every second, the world uses about 6700 bottles of beer or soda. With many countries lacking proper recycling transportation and facilities, the vast majority of these cans end up somewhere besides their proper place.
The US is also currently in the grips of a major prescription drug crisis — in particular, the opioid epidemic — and this problem has become increasingly worse with time. Aluminum is frequently used in prescription drug packaging, specifically in those foil blister packages. And where do those thousands upon thousands of little blister packs end up once the user has gone through them? You guessed it — most of the time, not in a recycling bin.
Aluminum, though initially drawn from the ground, has a harmful effect on the environment, as with any litter. If the US — which features significantly better-developed waste-collection and recycling facilities — fails to properly dispose of the majority of its aluminum products, we can expect the rest of the planet to be doing just as poorly, if not worse.
Aluminum Is Fully Recyclable
It should be mentioned that aluminum is a 100% recyclable material. Besides the loss of energy and nominal loss of material in repurposing scrap aluminum, the input and output remain equivalent. A single soda can should — after smelting and recasting — make another soda can. The same goes for bicycle frames or aluminum foil. While some energy is still required, it is more cost-effective and less wasteful than repeating the above production process.
When a can is thrown away, it does more than pollute the surrounding environment. It fuels the need for the entire production process. More cans thrown in ditches and on the street means more strip mining, more electrical charges and smelting, more carbon emissions and more reliance on fossil fuel electricity. With a greater emphasis on recycling, the extraction process will continue at a significantly reduced ferocity. Naturally, this would require a global shift towards collection and processing of recyclable materials.
It is not often we find a product that is entirely renewable. While the abundance of aluminum allows for a sense of limitlessness, the cost of production is heavy. Destroying the environment for something that is neither convenient nor cost-effective is the essence of insanity.
Kate is a health and political journalist. You can subscribe to her blog, So Well, So Woman, to read more of her work and receive a free subscriber gift! https://sowellsowoman.com/about/subscribe/