
Sustainability is an easy concept for a
business or industry to put its verbal support behind. Who
wouldn’t want to be viewed as a good corporate citizen?
It’s a different matter to actually
put weight behind one’s words. The aluminum industry has made, and
continues to make, a concerted effort to do just that.
What’s the evidence? Consider that
over two-thirds of all the aluminum ever produced is still in use today.
Certainly aluminum is a durable metal. But it is not merely its
durability that has permitted this remarkable record of
sustainability.
Rather, it is due to its
recyclability—a property inherent to the metal, but one which
nevertheless required the aluminum industry to construct a large
infrastructure by which this property could be harnessed to its fullest
societal and industrial purposes.
Aluminum Can Recycling
Lifecycle Considerations
Product Life
Aluminum Association
Sustainability Initiative
Sustainable Technologies
Aluminum Can Recycling
An early and highly successful sustainability initiative by the
aluminum industry was its creation of the aluminum can recycling
infrastructure. In response to environmental concerns and rising energy
prices in the early 1970s, the industry created a network of drop-off
and buy-back centers to prevent used beverage cans from being
landfilled— and instead be rerouted to facilities that would melt
the aluminum, reconstitute it into ingots, and send it on to mills that
would roll it back into can sheet.
Since that time, the
aluminum can recycling rate has increased from 15 percent to over 58.1
percent in 2010; gross tonnage of aluminum cans collected has
increased 35-fold, and the number of cans collected has increased by a
factor of over 50.
The payoff has been
extraordinary—environmentally and economically—and fairly
defines the term “sustainable.” As to the environment, the
benefits include energy and natural resource conservation, as well as
landfill savings. Recycling aluminum consumes 95 percent less energy
than does producing aluminum from ore—and that means lower
emissions associated with production of the metal.
The economic benefits cannot be
overstated. Recycled aluminum—alone among materials in the
consumer waste stream that are commonly recycled—pays for its own
cost of collection. And then some. Depending on current market prices,
recycling one ton of aluminum cans typically yields well over $1,000 of
revenue, while recycling a ton of steel, glass, plastics, or paper comes
nowhere close to covering the average collection cost of $200 per
ton.
Were it not for the recycling of aluminum
beverage cans, most consumer recycling would not be remotely feasible
and would probably cease—unless it were to be underwritten by
government. Recycling aluminum thus benefits not only our industry and
its consumers, but also the producers and consumers of many competing
industries whose recycling efforts ours effectively underwrites.
Despite the success of aluminum can
recycling, the industry continues to work to raise the consumer
recycling rate, as each reclaimed can helps further reduce
costs—to its own operations and to consumers and the general
public alike.
Lifecycle Considerations
What happens at the end of a product’s life—its
recycling or disposal—is, however, only one part of the
sustainability equation. Just as relevant are the efficiencies at its
creation and over the lifetime of the product during its use phase.
The aluminum industry has worked diligently to maximize
efficiencies in these areas also.
According to the International Aluminium
Institute (IAI), the
average energy consumption per ton of aluminum production has fallen
worldwide by up to 70 percent over the past century. A century ago,
primary smelters took roughly 28,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) to produce a
metric ton of aluminum from alumina. Today’s state-of-the-art
smelters use 13,000 kWh to produce the same amount of aluminum.
Since 1995, U.S. primary aluminum
producers have reduced perfluorocarbon emissions over 70 percent under
the Voluntary
Aluminum Industry Partnership (VAIP)—a joint effort
between the Environmental Protection Agency and a group of primary
aluminum producers that includes many Aluminum Association member
companies, including Alcoa, Century Aluminum, Kaiser Aluminum, Noranda,
and Rio Tinto Alcan. Partners achieve reductions by reducing the
frequency and duration of anode effects via a mix of management and
technological changes, employing the best options on a
smelter-by-smelter basis.
Product Life
Much of aluminum’s contribution to reducing emissions,
fuel use, and energy consumption come, of course, during a
product’s lifespan—particularly in automotive and
transportation. Aluminum’s light weight, combined with its
durability, can result in dramatic fuel and emissions savings.
Studies
recently undertaken by the International Aluminium
Institute show just how dramatic those savings can be. Among
their findings:
•The use of one pound of aluminum in
place of 1.5 lbs. of steel in a typical bus or truck application reduces
greenhouse gas emissions by almost 90 lbs. over the lifetime of the bus
or truck.

•The use of one pound of aluminum in
place of 1.6 lbs. of steel in a typical railway car reduces greenhouse
gas emissions by almost 450 lbs. over the railcar’s lifetime.
•Global use of aluminum in the
automotive sector increased from 5.5 billion lbs. in 1991 (source: IAI)
to 12 billion pounds by 2006 (source: Ducker Worldwide). Assuming
that 12 billion lbs. of aluminum is used to replace denser materials,
the potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetimes of
those vehicles would be approximately 240 billion lbs.
So great is the potential for emissions
savings from aluminum’s use in the automotive and transportation
industries that Alcoa, among others, has forecast that the aluminum
industry is well on pace to become “greenhouse gas neutral”
in the next decade. That is, the global warming impacts of aluminum
production will be fully offset by the amount of carbon-dioxide saved by
its use in the transportation industry.
Aluminum Association
Sustainability Initiative
Increasingly, stakeholders—including manufacturers,
fabricators, consumers, and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs)—are requiring detailed information about the energy inputs
and environmental impacts associated with the materials incorporated
into today’s retail products. To that end, the Aluminum
Association, under the leadership of its Sustainability Working Group,
has begun developing the metrics and methodologies to respond to these
informational needs of its customers and product market segments.
The Association’s Sustainability
Initiative, launched in 2008, involves the assessment and
communication of aluminum’s performance throughout its life-cycle,
with the goal of developing a complete understanding of the positive
contributions that aluminum makes to society’s environmental and
economic well-being; any negative economic or environmental impacts
associated with its production and fabrication; and the balance between
these positives and negatives during the life-cycle of the material.
Several studies have been launched as part
of this effort, including an aluminum can life-cycle
analysis (LCA), a material flow analysis, and an LCA of
semi-fabricated aluminum and auto products. Last year, the Association
announced the completion of its aluminum can life-cycle analysis.
One of the most comprehensive LCAs ever
conducted by an industry group, the “Life Cycle Impact Assessment
of Aluminum Beverage Cans” confirmed significant reductions in the
aluminum can’s weight as well as the energy used in its
manufacture and its carbon footprint. Upon publication, the Association
submitted the study’s associated data sets to both Walmart and the
Environmental Protection Agency for their respective database
revisions.
Sustainable Technologies
Technology plays a crucial role in leading the way to a more
sustainable aluminum industry. Through participation in such
partnerships as the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s)
Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), the U.S. aluminum industry works
to increase energy efficiency and lower emissions associated with the
aluminum production process.
Promising new technologies recently
unveiled include the following:
•Researchers at the DOE’s
Argonne National Laboratory and Noranda Falconbridge are developing a
way to
produce aluminum at significantly reduced temperatures.
Specifically, researchers are modifying the cell electrolyte to operate
at lower temperatures—which could eventually permit the use of an
inert anode.
•The ITP, working with Aleris Inc.,
among others, has supported the development of a radically new
concept for melting aluminum—isothermal melting—that can
dramatically improve energy efficiency in melting and other molten metal
processes.
•Alcoa has
launched a carbon capture technology at its Kwinana alumina
refinery in Western Australia. The system mixes bauxite residue with
carbon dioxide to lock up large volumes of carbon dioxide that would
otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
For More Information
To download the Aluminum Association's media sustainability
kit, which contains further facts and information on the aluminum
industry's sustainability efforts and achievements, please click on the
image below. 