ALM For America's Sake 15200 WEST 78TH STREET EDEN PRAIRIE, (MPLS.), MINNESOTA 55343 The beverage can must be controlled through a deposit system to eliminate littering and recycled to save metal and energy. The A.L.M. Machine shown provides a means of returning beverage cans, around which a national system of beverage can deposits and refunds can be developed. This system to be practical, must require minimum record keeping, yet offer accuracy and complete control of the can deposit system. The following summary shows how such a plan could be operated. A.L.M. CAN CRUSHING MACHINE AND PRERECYCLING CONTROL PLAN A.L.M. Engineering has designed and developed a small machine to be used inside stores selling beverages. This machine provides the first step toward recycling by crushing the can to a minimum size for easy pickup and handling, and by recording the number of valid crushed cans on a sealed nonresettable counter to provide the basis for the accurate control of refunds. The ease, speed and convenience of empty can returns will make the deposit system successful. As an example, a customer may return 48 aluminum cans weighing a total of 2-1/8 lbs. These may easily be carried in any suitable paper or plastic bag. After the customer drops them into the machine, a single ticket will be issued for the correct refund, all in less than a minute, and without use of store personnel. A like amount of bottles would weigh 50 lbs. and require 6 eight pack carriers or substantial boxes to transport, plus store personnel to count and verify proper bottles. The empty can, due to its extremely light weight and crushed to less than one fourth of its original size, may be easily picked up by drivers of any delivery trucks as they deliver canned beverages to the store. These crushed cans could be returned to the wholesaler or distributors base, and be held there for a mobile collection recycling unit, such as are now being used to compact cans for the smelters. Collecting deposits on cans will be simple. The canner pays into the National Beverage Container Fund (N.B.C.F.) a deposit of the same amount that has been added to his sales invoices. This deposit continues thru any distribution channel and is paid for by the customer. Refunds also become simple. The customer drops his empty cans into the machine which crushes them and by pushing a button, a ticket will be issued for the correct refund value which can be cashed at the store. The refund tickets are printed in the machine and recorded for security so that the amount of refunds paid out can never be greater than the number of valid cans returned. The last step is for the N.B.C.F. to reimburse the individual stores for the refunds paid. This can best be accomplished as follows: The machine in printing each ticket for a refund, also prints the total of all cans crushed up to that time on the sealed nonresettable counter, plus the store's identifying number. By the use of a key, the store personnel can issue one or more zero value refund tickets. This ticket or tickets will, of course, carry the store's identifying number, and total can count, and also be readable by computer, if used. By sending in one (or more) of these tickets, the store can be paid at intervals as agreed upon. BEVERAGE CONTAINER ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND OTHER IMPORTANT SAVINGS RESULTING FROM RECYCLING The table below, taken from the Environmental Action Release of June 3, 1974, compares five different containers for delivering 1,000 gallons of beverage (8,000 16 oz. bottles or cans). Under energy (106 BTU's) 35 million BTU's are listed for steel, while the same quantity of aluminum cans would require 89 BTU's, or approximately two and one half times the energy needed for steel. This is an important factor in the high cost of aluminum. The figures cited include most major factors in producing steel or aluminum cans. The following are some of the operations using energy in making cans, with the heaviest users underlined; blasting, mining, transporting mountains of raw material to plants, crushing, grinding, separatings, pelletizing, smelting, rolling, sheeting, punching, and forming into cans, plus moving mountains of tailings to landfills or lakes (Reserve Mining's dumping of 67,000 tons daily into Lake Superior). In recycling clean, high grade steel or aluminum, all the above energy use can be practically eliminated except the percentages required to melt and form this metal into new cans. It has been well publized that it takes only 5% of the original energy to recycle aluminum, or 4.45 million BTU's per 1,000 gallons of beverage. Steel which requires higher heats could possibly use up to 6 million BTU's. With the high speed of the modern can plant and using much lower relative energy consuming equipment, the rolling, sheeting, and forming of the aluminum can should not be in excess of 5 to 6 million BTU's per 1,000 gallons of beverages. Steel with its higher heat requirements could run from 6 to 7 million BTU's. This means that the total energy used in recycling and forming aluminum into new cans would be 10 million BTU's or a savings of 79 million BTU's for each 1,000 gallons of beverage (8,000 16 oz. cans) compared to producing from virgin ores. In steel, the total BTU's required would be 12.5 million or a savings of 22 million BTU's over virgin ores. We have marked in on the "fact sheet" the known and carefully estimated results that can be achieved. The most heartening accomplishment of recycling is, of course, the fact that this metal can be used over and over indefinitely with the addition of only minute quantities of new metal. COMPARISON OF FIVE DIFFERENT CONTAINERS FOR DELIVERING 1,000 GALLONS OF BEVERAGE Source: Preliminaty data prepared by the Midwest Research Institute for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. NIL NIL ILLUMINATING BEVERAGE CONTAINER FACTS BOTTLE VS CAN The bottle is tradition, it is an excellent beverage container, and has served well when most beverages were bottled and sold locally. In fact, returnable bottles work very well today for small localized bottlers, or even for major brewers in on-premise sales where the bottle can get careful handling and assured return to~ make it a success. However, the can is a part of the modern high speed filling plants that ship long distances, plus import and export in which the refillable bottle cannot compete. The refillable bottles are twice as heavy, take up twice as much space and use twice as much gasoline "or energy" per gallon of beverage delivered as lightweight aluminum cans. In addition, the empty bottles equal in weight to full cans, must be shipped back again. Bottles cannot be transported in bulk, and even in protective carriers they are a constant threat in shattering to cause dangerous lacerations from their razor sharp shards. Based on a 15 trip life of the bottle and based on replacing the 1973 production of 37.2 billion cans with bottles, it would require only 15 trips per year to require over 2.4 billion bottles for disposal, plus the same ratio on bottles already in circulation. Recycling the same number of cans would produce practically nothing for disposal. Each square foot of floor space in stores and supermarkets must produce its share of profitable sales. Cans require one half the space compared to bottles when stacked to "never" safe bottle heights, and to considerably less than one half the space when the light can pack is stacked to its "safe" height. The increase of bottle sales in Oregon have produced great disruptions and hardship on the State's stores. The bulky bottle now requiring an average of four times the space normally required for can and bottles, plus extra space for sorting, etc. The Panel on Materials Policy of the Public Works Committee heard testimony by an Aluminum Association spokesman regarding S.3560, S.3549. S.3277 and S.3723. I serve as chairman of the Association and concur in those views. I also am president and chief operating officer of Aluminum Company of America. In that capacity I would like to make some additional comments regarding these bills and respectfully request that this letter be made a part of the record of the hearings. Alcoa, as a producer of packaging materials and other products that enter the solid waste stream, is very concerned about refuse disposal and solid waste recovery. The solid waste stream is a potentially valuable source of aluminum, and Alcoa already has taken positive steps to develop it as a metal source. Our company is a charter member of the National Center for Resource Recovery. We are participating in several projects to develop equipment and procedures for recovering aluminum from urban solid waste. In 1969, we initiated the highly successful Alcoa "Yes We Can" program to reclaim and recycle aluminum beverage cans. We strongly endorse S.3560, the Randolph Bill, because it will encourage systematic expansion of resource recovery and waste disposal technology by private industry working with government. We believe resource recovery can harness the energy in refuse to provide new energy resources. And we believe recovery systems can economically reclaim resources to make a major addition to the nation's raw materials. Resource recovery equipment and systems already available can substantially defray waste processing costs through the sale of recovered materials. |