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Comment by cynicalsecurity | Hacker News Reader

Is it really wise to waste that much metal on beverage cans?

Not only is the planet Earth made of 1.59% aluminum, aluminum recycling is so incredibly efficient that a full 75% of all aluminum ever produced in history is still in active use in a recycled form.

If anything, we should probably be using more of it for everyday products like food containers, as a safer and more eco-friendly alternative to the sheer amount of plastic found in the supermarket.

Aluminum cans have a plastic lining.

But all of that plastic is incinerated and even otherwise hopefully less prone to micro plastic production, so not a real issue?

IFF recycled.

I don't believe it is so straight forward. Aluminium smeltering is an extremely CO2 intensive process (essentially you need a lot of natural gas to generate the heat, I think there are experiments with hydrogen but they are nowhere ready yet). Moreover in contrast to glass recycling where you can reuse the bottle (common in many areas), that's not possible with aluminium. The big advantage is weight, so a comparison between glass and aluminium typically depends a lot on transportation distances and how complex recycling processes are.

I think Iceland has a big (big for Iceland, at least) aluminium smelting industry. They don't have the ore, but plenty of cheap hydro and geothermal energy.

Aluminium melts at temperatures that, as far as ovens are concerned, can be classified as "tame". Sure, the oven needs to be built heat-resistant, but a melting point of just 660C allows things like uncooled structural steel to be used. This is so tame, that the molten salt type nuclear reactors (well, some of them) are able to serve as a heat source for such an aluminium recycling oven. 10 years ago there were coal power plants in active development that used high-pressure (around 350 atmospheres; 75% higher than what consumer-grade pressure washers tend to max out at) supercritical (700C) water to drive the first stage of their turbines, in an effort to extract more of the coal's chemical energy through exploiting a greater temperature drop. The aluminium oven does not need to handle such severe pressures, or contact with fast-flowing liquid that is as corrosive as water at those conditions (they can use a gas between the heat source and the aluminium, and fire brick style material between the aluminium and the structural walls of the molten-aluminium-bucket).

The heat is typically electric (which may or may not be CO2 intensive).

The reaction does produce CO2.

Totally agree aluminum is well recycled and glass hits even higher percentages outside the USA.

Beverages with carbonation go flat and stale rather quickly in plastic containers. For soda this is tolerable, perhaps because they have alot of carbonation and can lose quite alot. But for beer it sucks. Some regions around the world use plastic bottles for beer to keep costs down, but the already cheap beer is even worse than it might otherwise be.

Glass works well but I believe the costs, accounting for aspects like shipping weight, are greater.

So the best option is to drink bottled beer from a regional brewery, to keep the shipping costs down.

I'm not an expert, but apparently transport accounts for only 11% of carbon emissions for food [1], and I suppose it's likely similar for beer. To me this suggests factors affecting production are far more important.

[1] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-lo...

Best option is to get a refillable growler from your local brewery. Or, get beer from the tap at your local pub.

Growlers go flat too quickly. I typically don't want to consume a half gallon of beer in one sitting.

Apparently there are growler tap kits, so that the growler can be enjoyed throughout the week instead of a single sitting.

There are more sturdy multi-use plastic bottles that may be as good at keeping the pressure as aluminium cans. But not as good as glass bottles.

Deposit return systems work but it's really annoying now that I have a big recycling bin, I still have to pay 10 cents a can and then feed them into the machine one by one, the machines are always full or broken and they're usually only open until 7pm. So then I end up with hundreds of cans since I go to the store later, and they cap the amount you're allowed to return at one time.

The German deposit system for single-use beverage containers seems to not suffer this badly from "always full/broken, limited opening hours" machines. If the machine is full, it will usually be emptied soon, and I can't even remember if I've ever caught the only machine at a location being broken. I have vague memories of something like that, but 1) it's been about 10 years, and 2) I'm not even sure if it was broken or just whining about it's crushed-beverage-container-bin being full.

According to [0], the true chains (i.e., not just franchise brands) of grocery stores, at least the nation-wide relevant/big ones, all don't have a limit on how many containers you are allowed to deposit per visit (the machine will eventually fill up and if it's the only one they have, you'll have to wait until an employee has a chance to swap the bin out).

Unless they have it in a separate niche with it's own entry door separate from the rest of the store, the machines seem to be active/ready until they deactivate the motion sensors on the exterior doors, which happens around 20:55 and 21:00 around here (most of the stores nominally close at 21:00, but some few stores stay open between 1 and 3 hours longer).

[0]: https://www.t-online.de/heim-garten/haushaltstipps/id_923339...

Same here in Norway. It's rare to encounter an out of order reverse vending machine and all but the very smallest supermarkets have them and most such places are open from 07:00 to 23:00. Never encountered any kind of limit on how many and now that all the cans and bottles are crushed in the machine it's quite rare for the bin to fill up too.

The law in Michigan (and I think New York and other states are similar) is retailers must allow returns of up to 250 containers, but can choose to accept no more than that. I think the reason is to prevent people from buying uncrushed scrap cans from neighboring states without a deposit system, and returning them in a state that does have one.

The other big annoyance in Michigan is retailers only have to accept returns for the drinks they sell. So you have to keep track of what store a container came from, because if only that one store sells it, only that one store will accept its return.

A lot of times if the machine doesn't take a few of the containers, I will just give up and throw them away, because the stores don't provide recycling bins which is even more frustrating. Or, people will just leave the cans they couldn't return on top of the machines in case anyone else wants to try tracking down where they can return it.

Also, the law says any retailer must accept returns, but in reality only supermarkets with the money for the machines do. Smaller stores like gas stations generally don't.

Oh, we bundle the deposit to the can, and trying to trick the machine into accepting something that doesn't actually have the deposit on it would be fraud (you'd get caught if you'd do it at a scale where it'd be worth the effort, so it doesn't really happen).

I think small vendors may get away with only accepting what they sell, but supermarkets here have to accept the _types_ of deposit-laden containers they sell. So if they sell Monster Energy cans they also have to accept Rockstar Energy cans, and I'm pretty sure also all the other normal aluminium beverage cans.

For reusable bottles it's a bigger effect regarding the "only the types of containers they sell", as a shop without any glass bottles wouldn't have the infrastructure to handle more than individual quantities of reusable glass beer bottles (mostly the matching crates).

It's not wasted. It's 100% recyclable. Well nearly, the resin or plastic layer on the inside and he ink on the outside are not.

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