The U.S. aluminum market is under pressure from global shortages and tariffs, and new smelters would need huge amounts of cheap power at a time when data centers are competing for electricity. Recycling offers a faster, cleaner alternative: it uses only about 5% of the energy required for virgin smelting, and the country already has abundant scrap. The problem, according to experts cited in Canary Media, is that millions of tons of that scrap end up in landfills because sorting systems are inadequate and recycling policies are inconsistent.
Advanced sorting technologies are beginning to change that. Companies like Sortera Technologies and Greyparrot are using lasers, sensors, and AI cameras to identify and recover high-value aluminum alloys that conventional mechanical systems miss. At a large Brooklyn recycling plant, Greyparrot found that 89% of the aluminum passing through was recyclable, nearly double the average U.S. extraction rate. The Center for Strategic Industrial Materials is urging federal incentives and more research funding for these technologies, noting that recycled metal can free up virgin aluminum for defense and aerospace uses that require high purity.
Even with better sorting, the article says the deeper challenge is getting Americans to recycle in the first place. Beverage-can recycling rates are falling, and Americans threw away roughly 61 billion cans in 2023, worth about $1.2 billion. Ten states have bottle-deposit laws, but many are outdated: New York has kept its 5-cent deposit since the 1980s while collection centers still get 3.5 cents per can, making the work less profitable and less appealing. The result, as one Brooklyn recycling center director put it, is lost income and more cans in landfills. The article suggests that updating these policies and investing in better sorting could help close the gap between the aluminum the U.S. has and the aluminum it needs.