We Need More Aluminum. It's Sitting in Our Dumps

America's aluminum shortage may have a fix sitting in its trash. Writing for Mother Jones, Maria Gallucci writes that while the US scrambles to build energy-hungry new smelters to provide us with the aluminum we need for everything from power cables to data centers, an easier path lies in the cans and scrap metal now buried in landfills. The great news is that recycling aluminum requires just 5% of the energy that it makes to make virgin metal in smelters. The challenging part is that we throw out so much of it—61 billion cans representing $1.2 billion worth of aluminum in 2023—because "mechanical recycling systems aren't up to the task."

But Gallucci sees some paths forward. Her piece highlights startups that are using lasers, sensors, and AI to pull valuable alloys from mixed scrap, and shows how better tech at a major New York City facility revealed nearly twice as much recyclable aluminum as typical plants recover. But tech alone won't solve a basic problem: Americans don't recycle enough cans, and the deposit "bottle bills" that pay consumers 5 to 10 cents for each can they return only exist in 10 states and haven't kept pace with inflation. Changing that could help. Read the full article for more on aluminum, which is "infinitely recyclable."