MB Civic

Stephanie Strom reporting in the NYT ..

“Local governments are literally going broke and so are looking for ways to shift the costs of recycling off onto someone, and companies that make the packaging are logical candidates,” said Jim Hanna, director of environmental impact at the Starbucks Corporation. “More environmentally conscious consumers are demanding that companies share their values, too.” Perhaps most important, he said, “companies are becoming more aware that resources are limited and what they’ve traditionally thrown away — wow, it has value.” It is now cheaper to recycle an aluminum can into a new can than it is to make one from virgin material, and the same is becoming true for plastic bottles. “Shredding, melting, recasting and rerolling used aluminum beverage cans into new aluminum can sheet saves 95 percent of the energy that it takes to make can sheet from raw ore,” said Beth Schmitt, director of recycling at Alcoa

something tells me that this article is corp media PR for Starbucks and Alcoa (plus Nestle, Coco Cola, Walmart also among corps mentioned in the article), but if its true that its now cheaper to recycle aluminum and plastic bottles than to mine/manufacture them, well .. then that’s good news – mab .. read more