Not All Aluminum Is Created Equal

Of all the things that Orcas Recycling Services “freecycles” – corrugated cardboard; glass; steel cans, and aluminum beverage cans—the one that has real value to bale and ship off island to an agency that can reuse it is aluminum beverage cans.  Glass stays on Orcas; corrugated cardboard and steel cans get baled and sold off island, but aluminum beverage cans have real value.

Over the past couple of years, there has been confusion about whether or not aluminum cat food cans could be tossed in with the beverage cans—after all, it’s all aluminum.  We suspected this was too simplistic, and did some research.

According to an online search, cat food cans are often made with other metals in the mix, and are frequently contaminated with food residue.  On the other hand, beverage cans are made with single-source aluminum, and can be infinitely recycled.  Cat food cans are worth around 15 cents per pound, while beverage cans are worth from 40 to 70 cents per pound.  So, you can see that for the same amount of work with either product, the values make it an easy decision.  Bottom line:  do NOT mix aluminum cat food cans with the aluminum beverage cans. Too much mixing and we receive less return when we ship bales off island – and by the way, we’ve learned that it is better and easier to bale aluminum beverage cans in their “natural state” instead of making them into “hockey pucks” (they wrap around each other in baling and make a tighter bale).

Remember:  Only aluminum beverage cans in the dedicated bins—cat food cans go into Mixed Recycling.