According to the Container Recycling Institute, a trillion aluminum cans were thrown away from 1972 to 2003. This is more than enough to easily go to mars and back if stacked one on top of another. That's a lot of cans.
What is surprising is that the recycling rate for cans in the United States was only 57% in 2010, despite the fact that it takes much less energy to recycle cans than to make new ones, saving 9.5 tons in greenhouse gases per ton of cans.
One company, Alcoa, is working on increasing that rate to 75% by 2015. Hopefully their initiatives will help reach this moderate goal.
Even achieving this rate of recycling will leave the Americans behind Europe, where recycling rates are as high as 96% - see this graph from the CRI.
So, please recycle and do your small part.
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