Discover how your garbage gets another life!

By recycling, you give materials new life. Some items travel through the recycling and manufacturing process and are back on the store shelf in as little as 30 days! Your aluminum can, water bottle, or cereal box can become many different things we’ve picked just a few to feature here. Check out the key steps that six materials go through to become new products.

Find out what each material wants to be…

ALUMINUM CAN

Aluminum is infinitely recyclable. Recycling a can takes just 5% of the energy and emits a mere 5% of the greenhouse gases that making one from scratch does.

Collection

Collected at curbside, school, work, or public space recycling bins, or at local recycling drop-off or buy-back centers.

Processing

Cans come into the recycling process center crushed and in bales or stacks. The crushed cans are shredded into pieces the size of a walnut. The shreds, moving along a conveyor belt, are screened to get any non-aluminum materials out and then passed through hot air to remove any paint or lacquer.

Manufacturing

The brick or ingot of aluminum is heated just enough so that it can be rolled into a coil. The coil is approximately 9 miles in length. Manufacturers then take this coil to make new cans and lids.

Your can had a full circle adventure!

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CARTONS

Cartons contain some of the highest-quality virgin fiber in the recycling stream, and reusing those fibers means that we don’t have to deplete precious environmental resources to obtain more.

COLLECTION

Collected at curbside, at drop-off centers, and at workplace and school recycling programs.

PROCESSING

At the paper mill, cartons are added to a large machine called a Hydrapulper (imagine a giant blender) that uses water to break the cartons down into their component parts. The fiber is separated from the plastic and aluminum.

CONVERTING

Wet slurry pulp is spread onto a cloth or wire web where it is formed paperboard, similar to a three-layer cake.

The residual plastic and aluminum can be sent on for further recycling, and may become ceiling tiles or wallboard, or be used for energy production.

MANUFACTURING

Traveling like a ribbon around drying drums, the paperboard is dried and then wound into rolls that are 100 inches wide and 5 feet in diameter and weigh about 2 tons. It is ready to be shipped for converting into an end product.

I became a box of tissues!

Wow! Your juice carton can now help dry your tears or blow your nose.

Help spread the word and share what you’ve learned below!