Hydro Aluminum increases its North American recycling by 13 million pounds
Post-consumer recycling incresed 20 percent over preceding year
Hydro Aluminum’s Extrusion North America unit reported in July that it recycled more than 220 million pounds of scrap aluminum in 2010. Of this, some 60 percent was post-industrial waste. The remaining 40 percent was post-consumer waste, representing an increase of nearly 20 percent over the preceding year. The company says this growth was made possible by investments in equipment during the past two years that allows for an increase in the ability to recycle painted scrap.
“Compared to 2009, our total 2010 recycling volume increased by 13 million pounds, this in a market that is still recovering from the recession,” said Lynn Brown, senior vice president for sales and marketing for Extrusion North America. “But we are particularly pleased that our efforts to increase our post-consumer recycling have yielded such good results. This fits with our global corporate mission to provide our customers with environmentally compatible products.”
The company also said that for the fourth consecutive year, their 6000 series aluminum alloy products (the company’s most popular) contained 70 percent or more recycled content. Yet these products show no loss in strength or other performance characteristics.
“That’s one of the exciting aspects of recycling aluminum,” said Brown. “It can be recycled innumerable times without any performance degradation, and recycling only consumes 5 percent of the energy need to make new aluminum.”
By using aluminum with this high level of recycled content, designers and engineers can give their products a “green” profile, says Hydro. This can be particularly appealing industries such as renewable energy, building, and hybrid auto manufacturing. Hydro’s Extrusion North America unit remelts the scrap at its casthouse facilities in Phoenix, St. Augustine, Fla., and Monett, Mo., where it is combined with primary (virgin) aluminum to produce the aluminum billet required for new extruded aluminum products for its customers. All of these facilities are ISO 9001 compliant.
Hydro acquires scrap aluminum from a number of sources. Some of it comes from buy-back programs with its industrial customers. The post-consumer waste is purchased on the open market, and is comprised of used auto wheels, wire, old window frames and other aluminum products that would otherwise end up in America’s landfills.
Extrusion North America is a unit of Norsk Hydro, a global supplier of aluminum and aluminum products. Based in Norway, the company employs 23,000 people in 40 countries and has activities on all continents. In North America, Hydro is a leading provider of extruded aluminum solutions including supply sourcing, extrusion, finishing, and fabrication of components, as well as contract manufacturing services, for a variety of industries. For more information, please visit www.hydro.com/northamerica.