Low-impact living by Jane Powers
I'm an enthusiastic recycler of drinks cans. Could this be why so many passers-by deposit their cider and lager containers in our front garden? It would be handier if they popped them in my green bin, instead of tossing them among the flowers, but not to worry: we're all working together on this one.
We are pretty good recyclers in Ireland: better than the British, French, Italians and the Portuguese, as well as the recently acceded nationalities, but still behind the Scandinavians and the Dutch. We're on a par with Germany, says Elizabeth Arnett, of Race Against Waste, who adds: "The more northerly countries are better at recycling than the sunny ones in the south." Yet in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available) we recycled only 28 per cent of our cans, or 74.75 million. Could do better.
All our cans are shipped to Warrington, in Cheshire, to Novelis, Europe's only dedicated aluminium-can recycling plant. We're paid well for our used beverage containers - about €18,000 a tonne. You need 65,000 cans to make a tonne, which means we're getting about 3c for each one. Unlike many materials, aluminium can be recycled indefinitely without deteriorating; and it more than covers its reprocessing costs.
Although it is the most plentiful metal on the planet (making up 7 or 8 per cent of earth's crust), aluminium is extremely difficult to separate from bauxite, the mineral that contains it. The process uses electrolysis, which consumes massive amounts of energy. So, not only is it shockingly expensive, but it also involves opencast mining, mostly in Australia, western Africa and the West Indies. By recycling our cans we're keeping the operation closer to home, preserving the planet's fabric and using only 5 per cent of the energy needed for virgin aluminium.
At the Novelis plant in England, the cans are shredded, melted and recast into giant ingots of aluminium - nine metres long and containing 1.5 million cans - before being shipped to a can-making mill in Italy. After being pressed into can shapes they are shipped to the factories where they are filled with beverages, and before long they are back in the shops. The entire cycle can take just eight weeks.
Thanks to the miracle of recycling, less than two months after I pick up the discarded cans in my front garden, some of their original molecules could be right back there again. The world is interconnected in more ways than we might imagine.
