Did You Know?
It would take about 100 years for a steel can to break down through natural processes.
The need to recycle more!
Enough energy is saved each year by recycling steel to supply the city of Los Angeles with almost a decade worth of electricity.
Environmental Responsibility
It is everyone's responsibility to be aware of the environment's well being. We should all be aware of the impact and damage that can occur if we don't take precautions and recycle waste where we can.
Steel Facts:
- When recovered steel is used instead of iron ore to make new steel, water consumption is reduced by about 50%.
- It would take about 100 years for a steel can to break down through natural processes.
- Enough energy is saved each year by recycling steel to supply the city of Los Angeles with almost a decade worth of electricity.
- Making new steel products from recycled steel instead of virgin ore reduces water use by 40%, water pollution by 76%, air pollution by 86%, and mining wastes by 97%.
- Recycled steel is used to make new steel products including packaging, cars, lawnmowers, appliances, and construction materials.
Aluminum Facts:
- Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a television for 3 hours.
- Aluminum takes 500 years to break down in a landfill.
- Aluminum is the most valuable recyclable material.
- When they have been re-melted, aluminum cans can be used in any product made from aluminum.
- We use 5 billion aluminum cans a year, enough to reach to the moon and back.
- About 42% of aluminum cans were recycled in the UK in 2001 and about 50% world-wide.
- To make 1 tonne of aluminum it takes 4 tonnes of bauxite ore.
- Mining bauxite causes huge environmental damage. It is mined by open cast mining which may destroy the surface habitats which are often tropical rainforest e.g., in West Africa, the West Indies and Australia. It also leaves behind red brown mud.
- Transporting the ore and aluminum uses energy.
- Aluminum is extracted from bauxite by electrolysis. It is this part of the process which uses huge amounts of energy. It takes nearly 5 times as much energy to make a tonne of aluminum as to make a tonne of steel.
- Aluminum can be recycled over and over again with no loss of quality.
- An aluminum can recycled today will be back on the grocery shelf in about 90 days.
- Making cans from recycled aluminum saves 95% of the energy required to produce cans from virgin material.
Other Facts:
- Since 1950, Canadians have consumed as much as all the generations before us combined.
- In North America, we produce enough garbage each day, to fill 70,000 garbage trucks. Lined up bumper to bumper, over a year, they would stretch halfway to the moon.
- To create just one kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers create five kilograms of waste.
- When our trash disappears off the curb it is buried in the ground where it can remain, unchanged for centuries.
- More than 20% of the garbage thrown out by the average BC household is packaging.
- Canadians take home more than 55 million plastic bags each week.
- 75% of our trash can be recycled.
- Recycling one ton of cardboard saves over nine cubic yards of landfill space.
We Want Your Scrap!
Aluminum, Cardboard, Scrap Metals, Steel, Copper, Brass, Nickel, Carbide, Cast Iron, Stainless Steel, Cars, Catalytic Converters, Zinc, and more!
Have a Question? Contact us!
