Page 2 - 30. Don't Trash our Future .... Recyle it! - Part 3

Extracting and processing raw materials (wood, oil, ore) to make usable

products (paper, plastic, metal) requires a lot of energy. Recycling often

saves energy because the products being recycled usually require much

less processing to turn them into usable materials.

The amount of energy saved is dependent on the material in question. For

instance, glass is made by melting sand and other minerals at very high

temperatures. The molten mixture is then cooled to form glass. The most

energy-intensive part of the glass-making process is the heat necessary to

melt the mineral mixture. As recycled glass still needs to be re-melted to

make new glass products, the energy savings from recycling glass are

relatively small (roughly 10-15%).

However, aluminium is produced from bauxite, which needs to be

extensively processed to isolate the aluminium metal. This processing

requires a huge amount of heat and electricity. None of this processing is

required for the recycling of aluminium metal (e.g. in the form of cans),

which can be simply cleaned and re-melted, saving 94% of the energy that

would be required to produce the aluminium from ore.