Tag Archives: recycling aluminum cans

Crushing Aluminum Cans, A Process Improvement

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Collecting Aluminum Cans, Purpose:

For a field trip, the school my son attends incorporated a program that included crushing aluminum cans in an effort to teach kids about recycling, and a quick lesson in entrepreneurship.

My son was above to save up enough cans (over 6 or more  months) to pay for his entire trip this way.  The cost per student for the trip was $40.  Of course he had to collect cans from family, friends and neighbors.

Crushing Aluminum Cans, Process Improvement

In my last post about my son’s aluminum can entrepreneur adventure, I think I may have mentioned that I discovered a process improvement that makes the task easier.

The process improvement is extremely simple, but make a huge difference in the effort to crush the cans.  The secret is to squeeze the cans just slightly so that the integrity of the can isn’t 100%.  This creates a flaw in the can and it’s crushes much easier in the can crusher apparatus.

Crushing Aluminum Cans, Performance Improvement

Prior to the process improvement, my son was able to crush cans at a rate of 5 per minute.  After teaching him the new technique, he was able to average about 13 cans per minute!  That’s a 160 percent improvement!   we were able to process the entire bag in 15 minutes versus 45 minutes it would normally take me.

Compression of Aluminum Cans

I was able to crush two large bags full of cans.  The sad thing is that they fill up less than 1/4 of the large lawn bags.  This is good from me, but my son really hoped there would be more cans in the bag.

So sadly, we had to delay the converting of cans to money at a recycling center.  Perhaps we’ll give it another go in the very nearby future.

Lessons Learned For My Son

My son learned 2 things from this last bout of crushing aluminum cans!

  1. Simple changes to the process can have huge performance differences
  2. The benefits of the compression process drastically reduces the space requirements for the cans in the bag.  A overflowing full bag was reduced to about 1/5 of the original size.  He was amazed, even if he doesn’t get paid sooner than later.

 

-MR

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Is Recycling Aluminum Cans Worth Doing Anymore?

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At one time, it was worth it for people to recycle aluminum cans for money.

So I thought it would be a good experience for my kids to the same, but I’m not so sure now!  You see, advances in technology have made it possible for the aluminum in the cans to be stretch so far, that the can wall are almost as thin as paper.  This, in turn, produces a much cheaper can!

While it might be worth it for kids, the hourly earning rate for crushing 5 cans a minute may not be worth it for adults.

See my calculations in the table below:

Recycling costs

Aluminum Statistics

The tricky part is that the aluminum prices vary weekly and by state.  So in my state, aluminum is going for .40 cents per lbs.  In some states (Michigan and California) people can get a specific money amount for aluminum cans.  For example, in Michigan the rate is 10 cents per can, in these cases, the effort would be worth it.

The 10 cents rate per aluminum can is much higher than my home state (Ohio).  We typically only get 1.3 cents per can.  In fact, a state like Michigan (which has such a great return policy) would have a rate of pay of around $30 per hour to crush cans!  There have even been scams where people (mainly store owners) from surrounding states take their cans over to Michigan for reimbursements.

Now back to my state, do you think $3.75 is a good rate of pay for a 10-year-old to crush aluminum cans?  I personally don’t think it is.  Especially when you factor in the gas money it will take to get the cans to the recycling center and the cost of the plastic trash bag to gather them in.

Update: We are trying to decide whether to have my son collect cans to make money off of them, or to drop off at the local Fire Department.  The Fire Department takes the cans as part of a charity effort.

I called a metal recycling center after this article was posted, and the aluminum rates are currently .60 cents per lbs in my state (Ohio)!  So the current price is actually 50% higher than the .40 cents per lbs price that I initially used in this article!  This just goes to show how much aluminum prices can fluctuate.

So revising my calculated number for hourly pay rate for crushing aluminum cans, the new pay rate would be 50% higher too, so it would be $5.63 per hour spent crushing cans!  This revised rate is a bit better for a 10-year-old, so perhaps it is worth it to a 10-year-old?

Cheers,

-MR

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