The Truth Behind Australia's Aluminum Waste Problem

Описание: few things in the world of recycling surprise me - but i was surprised today.

I read that australia recycles virtually zero aluminium - which mean that off the countless tonnes of aluminium waste - none is actually recycled in Australia. Virtually all of it is shipped off shores for recycling.

This shocked me for a couple of reasons.

Aluminium is one of the truly recyclable common materials. To such an extent that experts estimate over 75% of all alluminium ever produced is still in circulation. We see it everywhere from drinks cans to solar panels

And it is easy to recycle. Aluminium’s life cycle provides significant benefits through recycling, saving 95% of the energy it would take to make primary aluminium metal. Every year, more than 30 million tonnes of aluminium scrap is recycled globally, ensuring its status as one of the most recycled materials on the planet

So it seems Australia then must be smelting too much new aluminium - which hits our pocket and the environment. How can this be?


Act 2 -
A lot seems to stem from the collapse of the Aussie car industry in the last 20 years.

When this industry collapsed - two rolling mills also closed which meant goodbye to our industrial ability to recycle scrap aluminium.

As aluminium smelters cannot safely accept general contaminated scrap, specialist metal recyclers currently collect and export both pre- and post-consumer scrap for recycling.

This means Australia ships virtually all its scrap metal off shore - to other countries to recycle. We then burn more fossil fuel and get more expensive aluminium - which makes manufacturing in Australia even more expensive and increases our energy usage. Over 10% of all electricity used in Aus is to smelt bauxite into aluminium after all.


Act 3.

So what can be done about this.

This comes back to the old problem for Australia - to actually have a truly circular economy we need to manufacture things here again - but when was the last time you heard of a politician supporting manufacturing?

It is of course a vicious circle - the less we recycle, the more expensive end products, the cheaper imports look - and so the cycle continues.

I think it is time we see a good cost benefit analysis on smelting scrap aluminium in Australia - and maybe direct some of those huge landfill levies to support it.