Recovering the can

Aluminum cans are one of the most recycled—and most recyclable—commodities on the market today. According to the Aluminum Association, Arlington, Virginia, aluminum can be recycled directly back into itself over and over again in a closed loop.

While aluminum is very recyclable, there have been challenges in capturing that material in curbside recycling programs. Keefe Harrison, founder and CEO of Falls Church, Virginia-based The Recycling Partnership says curbside recycling programs capture roughly one-third of cans, while the other two-thirds end up in the trash.

“Aluminum in the U.S. has a low capture rate,” she said during the Aluminum Association’s 2021 Virtual Spring Meeting in a session on recycling policy, consumer education and outreach April 14.

She continued, “Right now, we see about 30 to 40 percent of our cans actively recycled, and that means we see 60 to 70 percent of our cans thrown away. How do we know that? We do active capture rate studies.”

Harrison said The Recycling Partnership’s capture rate studies are performed by going door to door in communities across the U.S. and looking at what ends up in trash versus what ends up in recycling. According to those studies, part of the problem is that not everyone in the U.S. has the same level of access to recycle their aluminum cans. She stressed that equal access is one of the main problems causing low aluminum can capture rates in curbside recycling programs.

She said, “Only about half of all people can actually recycle at home; the rest of people have to do more than just put their aluminum cans in their blue bins. So, barrier to access is the No. 1 challenge. You can preach recycling, but if people can’t do it, there is no outcome.”

Another problem is related to misinformation with community education efforts. She said the general public might be interested in recycling, but they sometimes receive the wrong information from the media or other community members about how to recycle.

Three main elements involved in boosting curbside recycling rates are working on public awareness, community education and finally prompting behavior change, Harrison said. She added that awareness means ensuring the public has a general understanding about the recycling program’s existence; community education means teaching the general public how to participate in the program; and prompting behavior change means taking action with individuals to teach them if they are recycling right. Regarding behavior change, she gave the example of The Recycling Partnership’s Feet on the Street cart tagging campaign.

“When we run Feet on the Street, we see behavior change,” she said. “We see increases in [recycling program] participation, reduction in contamination and more materials moving through.”

Another way to boost aluminum can recycling rates is to involve policy, she said.

“We have 9,000 local governments in this country running different recycling programs, and the U.S. does not have active policy to advance a uniform recycling system,” Harrison reported.

From 2015 to 2021, The Recycling Partnership was able to help distribute 1 million recycling carts to residents across the U.S. to boost recycling rates. However, Harrison said, about 38 million U.S. households still lack access to recycling. She said U.S. policy could help improve municipal recycling by providing better access and infrastructure investment to recycling; better education efforts; and better sorting technologies at material recovery facilities (MRFs).

“Without policy, it’s a long road” to ensure everyone in the U.S. has access to recycling, Harrison concluded. “But with policy, we see a positive shift to work toward.”