Recycling of Automotive Aluminum - Present and Future

About 70% of the 740 million pounds of aluminum in U.S. cars scrapped in 1982 will be recovered for the secondary aluminum industry, making cars second only to used beverage containers as a source of old aluminum scrap. By the late 1990’s aluminum could supersede ferrous materials as the component with the highest total scrap value in the car. To fully realize this value, the automotive scrap industry will probably move from methods primarily designed to recover ferrous values toward practices which decrease the mixing of materials that presently limits recovery and value for aluminum.

Today’s system for recycle of used aluminum beverage cans could foreshadow development of a means for recycling automotive aluminum back to primary aluminum producers. This could be accomplished by increasing dismantling and by identification and segregation of aluminum components by alloy. Aluminum intense structures of the future could be stripped of non-aluminum components and shredded separately or baled.