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They say it's important to recycle aluminum cans, but why?

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The answer starts under the Earth's crust.

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In tropical areas, miners dig for bauxite, the reddish rock aluminum comes from.

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Bauxite is a raw material, so a refining plant has to wash and grind it up to extract alumina,

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which is then heated and filtered into a white powder.

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After adding electricity and carbon, you get liquid aluminum.

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Once it's cast into a solid block form called an ingot,

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aluminum is heated up, pressed thin, and punched into circles called blanks.

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The blanks are then shaped around forms into cans.

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That's when it finally looks like the cans you see in stores and vending machines.

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It takes a lot of work and materials to make just a single can,

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which is why recycling is so important.

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Putting a can in the trash means it ends up in a landfill,

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where its valuable resources take up space underground and become unusable.

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Littering is even more destructive, wasting our natural resources

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and creating a negative impact on our communities, wildlife and environment.

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But recycling a can enables these natural resources to continue doing something useful.

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After being put in a recycling bin,

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aluminum cans get hauled to a Materials Recovery Facility or MRF

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or MRF, where recyclables are dumped, put on a line,

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and sorted.

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Conveyors run in all different directions,

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at different speeds, and with different sized gaps

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and screens to make sure each type of material

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ends up in its own place.

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The separation process uses the varying weights and shapes

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of each material.

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Paper, for example, moves through a disk screen

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to be separated.

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The screen allows heavier items, like containers,

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to fall to the lowest levels.

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Plastics are sorted by a combo of high-tech machines and people hand-sorting at the line.

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And most metals are sorted by magnets.

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Since aluminum cans are not attracted to magnets,

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aluminum is one of the metals left behind after the steel and tin cans are sorted out.

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A special device quickly spins underneath the conveyor,

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which creates an electric current conducted by lots of different types of magnets,

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creating something called an eddy current.

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The eddy current repels the aluminum cans so strongly that it flings them up to their own section of the facility.

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From there, aluminum goes down its own conveyor line, is compacted into bales, and is finally sent to an aluminum reclaiming plant.

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After being cleaned and melted down, aluminum cans can be recycled again and again into brand new cans or other useful items.

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Aluminum never loses its quality or physical properties through this process.

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and making new aluminum cans from used cans takes 95% less energy than making a new can from origin

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materials so aluminum is definitely worth saving from landfills or drifting around as

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litter the simple act of recycling one aluminum can gives it new life and makes a big impact