CRI Chides Beverage Industry on Slumping Recycling Levels

According to data by the Container Recycling Institute, more than one trillion aluminum beverage cans have been thrown in the trash since Americans began buying cans 40 years ago.

The Container Recycling Institute is a nonprofit organization located in Arlington, Va.

The Institute estimates that 1,010,000,000,000 cans have been wasted since 1972, when the industry started keeping records.

"The cumulative environmental damage from the failure to recycle this metal is the real issue," said Pat Franklin, CRI’s executive director. "Not the buried tonnage or the dollar value of the wasted cans. Very few Americans realize that while we are trashing millions of tons of cans that could be used to make new cans, multinational companies like Alcoa and Alcan are forging ahead to build brand new aluminum smelters in pristine environments all over the world."

According to Franklin, the U.S. beverage can recycling rate has been declining since 1992, while the environmentally friendly public image of the can persists. "Only 44% of the cans sold in 2003 were recycled," she said.

"This rate is the lowest it's been since 1980, but industry websites continue to trumpet numbers from the glory days when '2 out of 3' cans were recycled. The aluminum companies and their trade associations tout the 'recyclability' of cans, but don't tell the public that 55 billion cans-- more than half of those sold--are not bring recycled. And of course the environmental effects of aluminum manufacturing are carefully hidden from the public."

"The recycling picture is getting worse, not better, but it could be turned around," she said. "We could achieve a recycling rate of 80-90 percent with a national bottle bill."

According to Franklin, "Beverage container deposit laws, or 'bottle bills,' exist in eleven U.S. states, and the 5¢ or 10¢ refundable deposit on beverage bottles and cans routinely achieves recycling rates of 70% to 95%."

"But the soft drink, beer, and grocery industries use their political clout to lobby against deposit systems, preferring taxpayer-funded residential programs.  Until the beverage companies and bottlers come forward and take responsibility for their beverage cans, the waste will continue and taxpayers will foot the bill," said Franklin.