This is how giving scrap metal value by recycling can help save the planet

We live in a throwaway society, so does it matter if we don’t give scrap metal value and just put it in the garbage bin?

It used to be a commonly held view that we can put our trash in a hole in the ground and just forget about it, but this attitude is not sustainable.

For a start - we have been filling these holes in the ground for so long, there soon won’t be any room left in them.

In the US, for example, a report last year said the country will run out of landfill space by 2036, creating an “environmental disaster”.

Canada is facing similar problems - Ontario landfilled 8 million tonnes of its waste in 2017 and sent a further 3.5 million tonnes to the US to be dumped.

Recycling not landfilling

Nobody wants to live next door to a landfill either, as they’re an ugly sight, they smell and can also be dangerous if liquid from the garbage seeps into the nearby water courses.

So, no government is going to start building more rubbish dumps to cope with what we throw away.

But the fact we are running out of places to put our garbage shouldn’t be the only reason we start thinking about recycling and giving scrap metal value instead of landfilling it.

The Danish-based World Counts organization gives some stark facts about the impact of not recycling items such as aluminum cans and bottles has on our planet.

70,000 airplanes

For a start, it takes just 5% of the energy needed to dig up and create a new product from ore to recycle an aluminum can and use that again instead.

In total, about 105 million cans are recycled a year across the world which is enough to build 70,000 Boeing 737 airplanes - almost ten times the number ever built.

The World Counts also says that by recycling aluminum cans and not making new ones from scratch, enough energy is saved to power 4.4 million homes across Europe for a year.

And only about half of the cans made are currently recycled - just think about what can be achieved if we recycle them all.

Limited resources

Putting a high scrap metal value on aluminum is one way to help save the planet's resources of which we are using up at a rate that is not sustainable.

Earth Overshoot Day was launched to illustrate the day each year when people use up more resources than our planet has the capability to generate in that year.

If everyone lived like people in Qatar, it would be 11 February each year, while the day for Canadians is 18 March.

For Brazil it’s 31 July, Egypt 25 November, Myanmar 25 December and smaller countries do not use more than is available to them in any given year.

As a collective, the earth reaches its overshoot day each year around July, showing the need to cut the strain we put on it.

Finding new solutions

But such data isn’t new - the World Wildlife Fund (now known as the World Wide Fund for Nature) said as far back as 2002 that if we keep consuming at the rate we are, by 2050, we will be using up 220% of the earth’s biological capacity.

These facts and figures illustrate that we must think of new innovative, environmentally-friendly ways to deal with our garbage, otherwise we will run out of both space and resources.

Physicist Albert Einstein may not have lived to face these issues, but his words are as relevant while dealing with this challenge as anything else: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

When did the metal recycling industry start?

A discovery off Israel’s coast illustrates how the metal recycling industry dates back more than 1,600 years to Roman times.

Onboard a shipwreck found by divers in 2016 were metal statues of a sun god, moon goddess and whale along with other figurines and coins.

The significance of this find to archeologists was that bronze artifacts from this era are rarely found.

That is because the Romans melted down their statues to make new items and if this garbage boat had not sunk in a storm, these would have been recycled as well.

Greeks and Romans

The fact companies such as Richmond Steel Recycling have been reusing metal since the 1970s might have led some people to think the metal recycling industry is relatively new.

But as a valuable resource that can be used over and over, the material has been put to new uses for centuries - this was particularly the case when coins bearing the face of a Roman emperor were melted to create new ones with the image of his successor.

In fact, the concept of reusing old items has been with us since the times of Ancient Greece - and often it happened when a raw material vital to a cause were in short supply.

During the American Revolutionary War in 1776, leaders such as George Washington and Paul Revere urged patriots to reuse items such as old chains and iron kettles, melting them down for armaments.

Musket balls

Some of their acts were quite symbolic, for example, a gilded statue of King George III was torn down in Lower Manhattan.

This then created 42,000 musket balls used to fight his British army.

But perhaps the first use of recycling as we know it today came in 1890, at a time when incineration was becoming more popular as a way of getting rid of rubbish.

Founder of The Salvation Army William Booth was one of the first people to see it as a way of providing food, shelter and employment for people in need.

He began setting up waste salvation centres around London which helped the poorer classes, who went around collecting junk from the city and recycling it to make money.

Wartime waste

It is during wartime, though, the metal recycling industry can become a key part of efforts - and its use can cut deep into society.

The book Waste into Weapons examined the situation in the U.K. during World War Two - and with a shortage of raw materials for munitions factories, millions of people were enlisted to collect scrap.

Many historical buildings and artifacts were destroyed to help the war economy, with the book detailing the great loss that occurred because of the need for new materials.

Similarly, in the USA, campaigns such as “Save scrap for Victory” saw metal artifacts melted down to make airplanes and ships.

Here in Canada, salvage committees were set up in every town and city in 1941, which coordinated efforts and collection drives.

By 1944, this was so successful that shortage were no more and moves to collect scrap metals, as well as rubber, bones and fats were stopped.

Salvage division

As well as helping to make everyone feel part of the war effort it also showed what could be achieved when efforts are made to find substitutes for materials.

The salvage division formed within the Department of National War Services in January 1941 was perhaps ahead of its time - with every country in the world now having a recycling division of some form.

In times of struggle, making the most of limited resources is always vital - and many Americans also survived the Great Depression in the 1930s by selling bits of scrap.

More and more aluminum recycling facilities and scrap yards then started to appear throughout the 20th century.

Earth Day

But maybe the metal recycling industry as we know it today really does have its origins in the period around when Richmond Steel Recycling started operating.

Following environmental protests in the 1960s, Earth Day was the brainchild of US Senator Gaylord Nelson, and it aimed to raise awareness of green issues and our effect on the planet.

The first was held in 1970 and 12 months later, in a poll of Americans, 25% said protecting the world was an important goal - a 2,500% rise from 1969.

Earth Day has kept growing ever since and is marked annually by hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

While the growth of Richmond Steel Recycling hasn’t been quite as dramatic in the past 48 years, the company is still proud to play its part in conserving the planet’s resources.

Demolition waste: Recycling some of our buildings

Montreal’s Seville Theatre once hosted Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, but like other once-great buildings, such as the old Toronto Star headquarters and Laurentian Hotel in Quebec, it became nothing more than demolition waste.

In the past year, the once revolutionary Empire Landmark Hotel has also disappeared after dominating the Vancouver skyline since 1973 – it is one of the tallest building in Vancouver to be knocked down, it had a revolving top floor restaurant, provided thousands of tons of concrete, steel, wood and other materials to be recycled.

But what happens when we decide to knock some of our buildings down?

According to Statistics Canada data, Construction, Renovation and Demolition (CRD) waste accounts for about 12% of all solid waste generated in Canada – so, while it’s not as significant as the total volume of other streams such as household garbage, large amounts can come from single projects.

And there are various estimates of how much scrap metal there is in demolition waste – with the UK-based Waste and Resources Action Programme saying the main components in structures ranging from homes to garages, to office blocks and skyscrapers can be about 59% concrete, 7% timber and 10% metal.

Once you’ve knocked the building down, sorting all these for recycling isn’t easy, especially if there is the lure of landfill – which is why local and regional governments are putting laws in place to stop companies, developers and homeowners taking this easy option.

One of the leaders has been the City of Port Moody which brought in a law in 2011 stating that anyone applying for a construction and demolition permit must recycle at least 70% of the waste created from it by the end of the project.

By only giving back deposits to managers who achieved this, it had a diversion rate of 84% of these materials from landfill two years later.

Others have followed, including Vancouver, which has ambitious plans for zero waste by 2040 and sees demolition as a key target area in achieving this.

Its Green Demolition Bylaw has been extended to cover most types of homes, with different requirements for properties depending on their age and how big they are.

A 2018 report stated about 10,000 tons were being diverted from landfills and incinerators a year - with the average diversion rate from pre-1940s homes being 86% and between 40% and 50% for traditional residentials.

Richmond Steel Recycling is one of the companies that gives a new lease of life to metals found in demolition waste – which includes copper used in pipes and electrical cables, steel from structural components and stainless steel in sinks.

Legislation is crucial to ensuring materials are salvaged and dealt with correctly as is evidenced by directives in Europe.

Construction and demolition makes up between 25% and 30% of all waste generated in the European Union, with the level of recovery and recycling varying greatly – from below 10% to more than 90% in its member states.

The EU warned that if it is not separated at source, it can contain hazardous waste “the mixture of which can pose particular risks to the environment and can hamper recycling”.

Many people will have fond memories of places like the old Seville Theatre in Montreal, which was built in 1929, and hosted Sammy Davis Jr, Louis Armstrong and a two-year run of The Sound of Music in the 1960s – but it shut in 1985, fell into disrepair and was demolished in 2010, with a condo now standing in its place.

Time catches up with many structures and a theatre of a very different kind was also turned to demolition waste this year.

Sporting theatre Allianz Park in Sydney, Australia, was a field of dreams that was built in 1988 and hosted 45,000 fans to watch major sporting and music events.

But after much protest and legal challenges, Michael Buble was the last person to perform there in October 2018, and it has been reduced to rubble, with plans to build a new modern venue on the site.

Not all threatened buildings end up on the scrap heap, though, thanks to the work of organizations such as the National Trust for Canada.

It says it Top 10 Endangered Places List “has become a powerful tool in the fight to save places that matter”, focusing on those used for worship, social centres, schools and other buildings that hold significant history and memories.

How recycling aluminum cans changes lives

Around the white sands of Copacabana and Ipanema beaches in Rio de Janeiro as the sun beats down and surfers mill on the water’s edge, you will find no scrap left out on the streets and walkways, because recycling aluminum cans has become a way of life here.

Those who quickly collect any trash that is dropped or placed in the garbage bin see it as a lifeline and might ask someone disposing of it: “Would you throw away money?”

This is how people in many parts of Brazil see garbage - as an income stream and a way of earning money to feed their family. It’s a totally different attitude to how most people in the western world, including Canada, view types of scrap metal.

But then again, recycling aluminum cans in these countries isn’t changing lives, helping the poorest people out of poverty and at the same time, achieving a near 100% recycling rate.

In the world, about two billion of us live in communities with no garbage collections - that’s about one in four - but in countries such as Brazil, people collect it themselves, with the latest census in 2010 showing nearly 400,000 people were employed as waste pickers, paid by weight for the materials they collected.

Near 100% recycling rate

This has helped Brazil become the world champion for recycling aluminum cans, collecting and processing 96% of cans sold in 2005, rising to a high of 98.4% in 2014 and staying at an impressive 97.3% the last time data was collected in 2017, according to the Brazilian Aluminum Association.

To put this impressive performance into perspective, that’s 289,500 million tons of the 294,200 million tons of aluminum cans sold by companies such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola collected and recycled - in total, 62.7 million cans processed a day and 2.6 million an hour.

And this effort is not just to save the environment - scrap yard’s paying for collected metal create opportunities that are “taking people off the streets” in Brazilian cities such as Belo Horizonte, according to an Informal Economic Monitoring Study.

It looked at 763 people employed in the industry in five cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, finding for 65%, collecting trash was their primary income.

Some estimates there are 1.5 million to 4 million waste pickers in India, collecting aluminum cans and plastic bottles as well as other types of garbage.

But there are many ways to change lives with trash.

Changing lives through waste management

This was the philosophy of the European Union, when spending millions of dollars in one of its poorest states, saying: “Improved waste management leads to a better quality of life.”

In Romania’s Maramures County, it invested in a complete system of recycling – but the aim was not just to increase recycling rates of different types of garbage.

It also wanted to improve the lives of the 500,000 residents in many other ways - firstly, by reducing what they sent to landfill and what they dumped in the countryside, reducing health risks from this, improving hygiene and the quality of the environment.

And if it could achieve these things, it hoped the area would be more attractive to potential investors - who would then set up business there, bringing jobs and opportunities with them.

Maybe the secret to turning trash into cash and changing your life through it is just a case of waking up to the possibilities - just ask former hockey player Patrick Dovigi, who founded Green for Life and is now worth an estimated $1.08 million.

But perhaps the most inspiring case is that of a 13-year-old girl who escaped the civil war in El Salvador with her family and arrived in the US without knowing a word of English.

“When I see waste, I see opportunity. That’s my slogan,” are the words of Maria Rios, which show that maybe the vast majority of people look at garbage in totally the wrong light.

She started off by taking out a bank business loan to buy two garbage trucks – now the Houston-based entrepreneur is CEO of US firm Nation Waste, which turns over US$ 30 million a year.

Not-for-profit recycling

But aluminum cans, end-of-life cars and scrap yard prices aren’t all about earning a living or making your fortune – recycling can also change lives while making no profit for the business behind it at all.

In the UK, a “unique” organization is combining business and charity, with Recycling Lives using all the money it makes from commercial operations to help others.

Through revenues made by its scrap metal and scrap car enterprise, it funds a residential accommodation for homeless people, a food distribution centre for poor people and an offender rehabilitation program so they don’t end up back in jail.

It’s an old saying – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but maybe it should be changed to everybody’s trash could become somebody’s treasure.

That way we won’t ever throw money away again while saving the environment, and who knows, maybe create a few business and job opportunities from items that would otherwise be destined for your garbage bin.

The circular economy: Do aluminum cans really last forever?

If you ever feel like your life resembles Groundhog Day, as you repeat the same things over and over and over again, then maybe you have more in common with aluminum cans than you imagined.

Singer Joni Mitchell pitched life as going “round and round and round in the circle game”, but if it’s the “the carousel of time” that people get stuck on, the repeated journey of the aluminum can is from store shelf to aluminum recycling center, back to the beverage company and returned to the store shelves, over and over again.

And while Mitchell’s song is The Circle Game, it is the circular economy that aluminum cans are considered the star player of.

So much so, Friends of the Earth estimates that about 75% of the aluminum that has ever been used since the 1940s - around 540 million tons of the metal - is still around in some form today.

Earlier this year, Molson Coors celebrated 60 years since Bill Coors first used aluminum to package beers.

While recycling companies such as Richmond Steel Recycling, which has locations throughout BC, pay scrap prices, Molson’s cans sold in Canada are collected by the company and it wants 100% of all its packaging reusable or recyclable by 2025 - meaning it can use the metal over and over again.

It was in 1964 that The Aluminum Association says aluminum cans first entered the soft drinks market - with Royal Crown Cola selling one million cases in its first year.

These days aluminum packages a vast array of energy drinks, sodas, soft drinks, waters and a growing range of craft beers.

And if cats can proudly claim they have nine lives, they have nothing on the durability of aluminum, which can basically last forever.

Coca-Cola said that in Canada, the “miracle metal” which is “infinitely recyclable” can be back on the shelves within 60 days of being chucked in the garbage bin.

That’s just two months, so it’s feasible that aluminum from a soft drink you consume tomorrow, could form part of another five containers within a year.

And for those aluminum cans first used by Bill Coors in 1959, if they had been going round and round the circular economy the whole time since they could potentially have been used to form part of about 300 other beverage cans.

So how does this carousel of aluminum cans keep moving around work? Well, according to The Recycling Guide, after you drink from it and throw it in the garbage, it is collected and sorted from other waste, before being taken to a recycling center, where aluminum scrap prices are paid.

It is then taken to a treatment plant, where it is cleaned and then melted, with all coatings, inks and remnants of its past life as say a Fanta or Mountain Dew container removed.

And it doesn’t go through this process alone - in fact, up to 1.6 million aluminum cans can be melted together and turned into large ingots, before being rolled to give greater flexibility.

The can recycling process is then almost complete, as new containers are pressed and sent back to the beverage companies.

With recycled aluminum cans taking just 5% of the energy needed for primary production of drinks cans, its merits make it a key component of the European Commission’s Circular Economy Package.

And its never-ending life cycle is providing inspiration as governments and organizations look at how to deal with other garbage such as plastics, papers, cardboard and glass.

In 2020, Ottawa hosts the World Circular Economy Forum, with the minister of environment and climate change Catherine McKenna calling for innovation and to look at ways of giving other materials longer lifespans, just like aluminum.

“Let’s work together and turn that trash into cash,” she said.

To learn more about Richmond Steel Recycling efforts towards environmental sustainability or more information about scrap metal recycling please contact your local facility.

Could the benefits of aluminum recycling help cans replace plastic bottles in Canada?

The Canadian government wants to ban harmful, single use plastic by 2021, which could lead to a huge increase in aluminum recycling and a change in how we buy water, Coca Cola, Pepsi and other soft drinks.

There are many problems with plastic. Unlike aluminum, which is collected by companies such as Richmond Steel Recycling and processed at the scrap yard, less than 10% of the three million tons of plastic Canadians throw away each year is recycled.

The plastic bottles you throw away could end up literally anywhere. In fact, Greenpeace research found 100,618 tons left Canada’s shores for China in 2017. But after the Asian country banned imports, our bottles have turned up in countries such as South Korea, Pakistan and Turkey.

While this may surprise you, some have ended up at a far more harmful destination - the ocean, with Greenpeace also finding 12 million tons enter the world’s waters each year from around the globe, threatening birds, fish and other creatures that can get caught up in it or eat the small particles.

There can be creative solutions to what we do with the mountain of plastic waste we produce - Nova Scotia-based company JD Composites recently made a house from 600,000 plastic bottles.

But novel ideas aside, aluminum metal recycling provides a far more sustainable route for our garbage - for a start, plastic can potentially be recycled seven times before losing its quality, while aluminum can be recycled over and over and has an infinite lifespan.

The Aluminum Association pointed out that five million tons is recycled in Canada and the US each year, with about 75% of all aluminum produced when it first entered the product market as foil and packaging in the early 1900s still in use today in some form.

Its value as a commodity is also far greater than the metal price paid at the scrap yard, with the organization saying it can have environmental benefits - for example, a 10% increase in aluminum recycling is capable of decreasing the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 15%.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has taken inspiration from the European Union, which decided last year to outlaw single use plastics - such as straws, plates, cutlery and cotton swabs in its member states.

It has not yet been decided what items will be the focus of Canada’s ban, but selling Coca Cola, Pepsi, and particularly water solely in aluminum cans would represent a culture shift for many consumers.

This was successfully tried at the Glastonbury festival in the UK this year - with plastic bottles banned from sale to the 200,000 revellers. All drinks were sold in aluminum cans and volunteers collected 45 tons of aluminum at the end for recycling.

Some festivals have gone further, with Thailand’s Wonderfruit going carbon neutral and even bypassing aluminum recycling by urging visitors to bring their own steel or bamboo flasks for drinks.

But as long as the will is there and we can get the metal to the scrap yard, aluminum recycling can be easy.

In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made aluminum a key focus of “a greener Apple” and wanted to increase the use of recycled aluminum in its products from 9% in 2006 to 28% in 2010 - in fact, the company achieved 66% by 2009.

Learn more about Richmond Steel Recycling’s core values and for more information about scrap metal recycling please contact your local facility.