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The first step in aluminium recycling is the collection and sorting of aluminium scrap from various sources. [5] Scrap aluminium comes primarily from either manufacturing scrap or end-of-life aluminium products such as vehicles, building materials, and consumer products. [5]
Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the lithosphere at 82,000 ppm. It occurs in low levels, 0.9 ppm, in humans. [1] Aluminum is known to be an ecotoxicant and expected to be a health risk to people. Global primary production (GPP) of aluminum was about 52 million tons in 2013 and remains one of the world's most important metals.
The development of tools which calculate upfront carbon emissions is expected to bring changes to the relative competitiveness for US-produced aluminum products, and result in states with cleaner electric grids gaining a competitive advantage both for sourcing aluminum construction materials, and for siting of new aluminum industry facilities. [21]
The most suitable materials for closed-loop recycling are aluminum and glass. These are known to maintain their quality throughout many cycles of extraction, production, use, and recycling. [5] For example, aluminum cans can be recycled and turned into new cans with practically no material degradation or waste. [citation needed]
[30] [31] [32] Recycling rates lag behind those of other recoverable materials, such as aluminium, glass and paper. From the start of plastic production through to 2015, the world produced around 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste, only 9% of which has been recycled and only ~1% has been recycled more than once. [33]
Energy recycling is the energy recovery process of using energy that would normally be wasted, usually by converting it into electricity or thermal energy.Undertaken at manufacturing facilities, power plants, and large institutions such as hospitals and universities, it significantly increases efficiency, thereby reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas pollution simultaneously.
An illustration of the allocation of avoided burden and recycling benefits across life cycles. Avoided burden (also known as the 0:100 method or end-of-life method) is an allocation approach used in life-cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of recycled and reused materials, components, products, or buildings.
Recycling codes on products. Recycling codes are used to identify the materials out of which the item is made, to facilitate easier recycling process.The presence on an item of a recycling code, a chasing arrows logo, or a resin code, is not an automatic indicator that a material is recyclable; it is an explanation of what the item is made of.