Mining Matters

For early humans, making dinner required catching a moving target and convincing it to become an entrée, gathering plants that were both nontoxic and in season, and digging in the dirt for edible roots. Beverages served depended on a fresh water source nearby, such as a river, lake or spring.

Today, we can open a kitchen cabinet or pantry and find a multitude of plants and proteins in cans that will outlast us all. While most cooks don’t rely solely on canned goods for meal preparation, it’s a marvel that on our grocers’ shelves, pineapples are always in season, tomato basil soup is always ready to heat, and ripe olives are already picked and pitted.

In the refrigerator, canned juice, sodas, energy drinks, adult beverages and sparkling mineral water present us with options for quenching our thirst.

But the real marvel is the can, and your can’s existence probably started with a big bang.

To uncover the ore (bauxite for aluminum cans and iron for steel cans), mine operators must first remove a landscape’s trees, plants and any wildlife. The layer beneath the surface is then broken up using methods such as blasting, drilling and ripping with large bulldozers and other heavy equipment.

From the mines, ore is shipped to a processing plant. After the ore has been transformed into steel or aluminum, the product is hauled by trucks, trains or ships to factories for further processing. After that, the product is shipped to factories where cans are made and then on to places that put food and beverages in the cans. It takes a lot of energy and fuel to transport ore from mines and transform it into cans. However, once the can is made, it’s made, and can be remade from itself indefinitely.

Steel

Nearly all of Earth’s major iron ore deposits are in rocks that formed over 1.8 billion years ago.
The ore for the steel cans was once under the ground thousands of miles away, maybe as far away as Australia, Russia or China.
Each household in the United States uses approximately 600 steel cans per year.
Recycling 1 ton of steel saves about 2.5 tons of iron ore, 1 ton of coal and 120 pounds of limestone.
Food cans usually contain a tin coating that is a valuable metal. Seventy to eighty percent of this tin is recovered in the food can recycling process.
Steel products can be recycled repeatedly without loss of strength.
Recycled steel is used to make new steel products including packaging, cars, lawnmowers, appliances and construction materials. All new steel products contain at least some recycled steel.
Making new steel products from recycled steel instead of raw ore reduces water use by 40 percent, water pollution by 76 percent, air pollution by 86 percent and mining wastes by 97 percent.

Aluminum

Aluminum is a sustainable metal – it can be recycled again and again with no loss in quality.
Nearly 75 percent of all aluminum produced in the United States is still in use today.
Bauxite, the ore needed to produce aluminum products, is typically mined in tropical and subtropical regions (the same region where rain forests are found).
Americans send nearly $1 billion worth of aluminum cans to the landfill every year.
An aluminum can travels from the recycling bin and back on store shelves in sixty days.
Electric power represents about 20 to 40 percent of the cost of producing aluminum. By national average, aluminum production consumes approximately 5 percent of electricity generated in the United States.
It takes 31 to 35 (12-ounce) aluminum cans to equal a pound. (Can weight varies slightly by brand.)
Recycling aluminum takes 95 percent less energy than creating aluminum from raw materials.

Every time you recycle a can, you mine a domestic natural resource. When you recycle cans, you are also protecting air and water quality, conserving energy, reducing waste and preserving habitat. All you have to do is give the can a rinse and walk it out to the recycling bin.

More info:

Learn more about curbside recycling at FloridaRecycles.org.

Learn more about the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s recycling programs and Florida’s recycling goal at floridadep.gov/waste/waste-reduction.