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Become Involved With Can Recycling Sacramento

By Andrea Davidson


As you travel about the city going about your normal routine you will have noticed some blue coloured bins. These are there as places for people to place their recyclable items in, instead of them being put out with the general trash. The aim of people using these bins is to help preserve the Earth's natural resources. It is simple to become involved with a can recycling Sacramento scheme.

Many people are surprised to find that what they are throwing out as trash most of it can be recycled. As a small mental exercise try thinking about just how many food and drink cans you toss out each week. Now that number needs multiplying by 52, so even a conservative 10 a week soon becomes 520 a year. Just think how many that would be if your whole street tossed the same number as food and drink cans as you.

It is quite easy to see how one simple activity can make such a difference. Cans will either be made from steel or aluminium, and the easy way to tell the difference is with something as simple as a fridge magnet. If the magnet sticks to it then it is steel, and if it doesn't it is aluminium.

A sobering thought is that every year Americans trash over 50 billion cans. Someone has calculated that as being enough metal to construct 13 carriers for the Navy. If you were to look at direct energy savings, then if 4 soda cans were recycled the energy value saved would be enough to operate a washer machine for an hour. Even just 1 recycled can would save as much energy as you would use playing a whole album on an MP3 player.

As with most things you are the first link in the chain. Consider that you have just emptied a soda can, and it was then deposited in one of the blue bins. These bins do get emptied on a very regular basis, and their contents get taken to a municipal collection and sorting point. As soon as there is a sufficient quantity of either, they are sent to a treatment facility, where they face the next leg of their journey.

There are various tests that your soda can will get subjected to before being shredded, if it meets the quality requirement. From there the shredded pieces of aluminium are heated. This will remove the painted surface that everyone is so familiar seeing.

When that heat treatment has been completed the metal pieces are subjected to even more heat. All of the pieces now come together as a molten mass. This will then be poured into moulds, and when cooled they will have become solid ingots, or bars, of aluminium. The ingots in turn are formed into flat sheets, a manufacturer finds making a new soda can a lot easier this way.

So by a small bit of time and effort on an individual's part a big difference can be made. To make things easier steel cans should be separated from aluminium cans. In the interests of hygiene it also helps if the cans are washed out before they get left in the blue bins.. It is easy to help the environment by becoming involved with a can recycling Sacramento scheme.




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