Compared to this example, aluminum is in a very fortunate position. One of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust is second only to silicon and oxygen, and its content is so high that demand never exceeds supply.
Scrap aluminum has always been an important source of "new" metals. According to industry estimates, about two-thirds of the end-use aluminum is recycled, because remelting aluminum in metal form is much cheaper than extracting it from the original ore. This is also one of the great advantages of aluminum.
Aluminum can be recycled economically and has been a recognized fact since commercial sales began more than a century ago. As a second-hand material, it retains true monetary value, unlike many other packaging materials that may cost money to process. This metal remains essentially intact in volume and can be remelted to become new metal at one-twentieth of its original extraction cost, ready for the next task. Several successful national waste beverage can collection and recycling programs (for the production of more beverage cans) clearly demonstrate that aluminum packaging materials can be recycled with great success.
Modern molten metal filtration technology can maintain high quality, and aluminum companies attach great importance to this rich source of secondary metals, which has relatively low energy costs.
