Americans are throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars in aluminum every year. A big part of the issue is that we are not sorting our recyclables before collection. The big blue bin for collecting unsorted recyclables has made recycling waste hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 1904, the United States pioneered recycling aluminum with two of the world’s first aluminum recycling centers. During World War II, recycling became a matter of national necessity. Then, scrap yards where people could exchange their old metal for cash began opening across the US. Curbside, unsorted recycling started in the 1970’s.
