Hacker News Reader

Aren't we at a point where recycling aluminum is a lot more energy efficient than removing it from bauxite and therefore more profitable for the industry to pull it from trash?

View on HN

Always was, I think?

At least for domestic uses, I know nothing about fancy alloys.

Even when I was a kid, people were big on separating steel and aluminium cans and showing off how recyclable aluminium is.

Some countries do recycling of aluminium well, Japan for example, most don’t. Issues with contamination, sorting, pipeline, storage, just to name a few make it hard to implement well.

Last time I checked modern aluminum alloys made it very hard to recycle aluminum waste efficiently. That's still the case, apparently.

Nearly all industrial ones yes, that’s why some countries that care a lot about recycling use easy to recycle alloys for cans, like Japan. They also religiously keep contaminants and other bits of aluminium out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com