Fun factoids about aluminum

Every minute of every day, an average of more than 123,000 aluminum cans are recycled.

Since 1972, an estimated 660-plus billion beverage cans have been recycled—placed end-to-end, they could stretch to the moon nearly 300 times.

The average lifespan of an aluminum beverage can is six weeks, including the time it takes to be manufactured, filled, sold, recycled and remanufactured.

Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for almost four hours or provide enough power to a television for three hours.

Tossing an aluminum can wastes as much energy as pouring out half of that can’s volume of gasoline. If each person recycles one aluminum can each month, energy savings equal 1,750 to 3,500 gallons of gas.

American consumers and industry throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire U.S. commercial air fleet every three months.

Aluminum made up 1.5 percent of the total municipal solid waste stream in the United States in 1994. The overall rate for aluminum packaging was 55 percent.

In 1884, total United States aluminum production was 125 pounds. That year, a 100-ounce cast aluminum pyramid paced atop the Washington Monument represented twenty percent of this production.

Four tons of bauxite produces one ton of aluminum—enough to manufacture 60,000 beverage cans or spaceframes for seven full-size cars or 40,000 computer memory disks.

One pound of aluminum can replace twice that weight in steel in most applications.

Rubies, emeralds and sapphires consist mainly of crystalline aluminum oxide.

Manufacturers used Cold War technology to make Little League bats from aluminum.

Aluminum is light, strong, corrosion-resistant, nonmagnetic, nontoxic and naturally good looking.